American Power Quotes:

I would say that I have been consistent in my broad view of how American power should be deployed, and the view that we underestimate our power when we restrict it to just our military power. We shortchange our influence and our ability to shape events when that's the only tool we think we have in the toolbox.

- Barack Obama

source: Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

topic: Military, Thinking, Views, Toolbox, American Power

The real threat to world stability is not too much American power. It is too little American power.

- Michael Mandelbaum

topic: Real, War, World, American Power

The main problem with American power is not that it is American... No, the main problem with American power is the power itself. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power.

- Timothy Garton Ash

source: "Us and the hyperpower" by Timothy Garton Ash, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2002.

topic: Would Be, Problem, Dangerous, American Power

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

- Thomas Paine

topic: Pain, Freedom, Fear, Independence And Freedom, Independence Day Patriotic

'Smart power' is the use of American power in ways that would help prevent and resolve conflict - not just send our military in.

- Hillary Clinton

topic: Military, Smart, Use, American Power

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

- Benjamin Franklin

topic: Inspirational, Happiness, Peace, Social Democracy, Power Corruption

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

- Frederick Douglass

topic: Freedom, Power, Demand, Labor Union, Struggle For Freedom

American power worldwide is at its historic zenith.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

topic: Zenith, Historic, American Power

My overall worldview has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world, that we must lead the international community to confront threats and challenges together, and that we must use all tools of American power to protect our citizens and our interests.

- Chuck Hagel

topic: Military, America, Community, International Community, American Power

The two world wars boosted American power and devastated potential rivals to an extent that could not have lasted more than a few decades.

- Ian Bremmer

source: "A World Without Leadership: Ten Questions with Ian Bremmer (Part 1)". Interview with Ali Wyne, bigthink.com. May 6, 2012.

topic: American Power

American power in the world relies on these ideals of openness and critical debate.

- Joseph Nye

topic: World, Debate, Openness, American Power

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

- John Quincy Adams

topic: Religious, Business, 4th Of July, Moral Virtues, Morality And Religion

American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

- William Kristol

topic: Defense, Principles, Promotion, American Power

American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it, because the United States plays a major, constructive, and historically unprecedented role in the world.

- Michael Mandelbaum

source: Michael Mandelbaum (2010). “The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era”, p.53, PublicAffairs

topic: Play, Roles, Benefits, American Power

My heart trembles when I reflect that God is just

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: God, Patriotic, Heart, Social Injustice, Justice And Injustice

The truth was that all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

- James Madison

source: James Madison's notes on the debates in the Federal Convention, avalon.law.yale.edu. July 11, 1787.

topic: Truth, Men, Presidential, Power Corruption, Limited Government

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

- John Adams

topic: Religious, Revenge, Ambition, Strong Government, Moral Virtues

If I were doing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member, the United States, because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world. All international laws are invalid, meaningless attempts to constrict American power.

- John Bolton

topic: Real, Reflection, Law, Distribution Of Power, American Power

We will continue to deepen our engagement using every element of American power - diplomacy, military, economic development, the power of our values and our ideals.

- Barack Obama

topic: Military, Memorable, Engagement, American Power

The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

topic: Attitude, War, America, Pearl Harbor Attack, Ambivalent

Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment.

- Jimmy Carter

source: Jimmy Carter (2014). “The Jimmy Carter Library”, p.1025, Simon and Schuster

topic: Responsibility, Power, Past, International Community, Great American

Ordinary Americans, and especially the small minority active in Democrat and Republican primaries, must learn more of what people across the globe are thinking and saying about the US. For if you follow that, you realise that the erosion of American power is happening faster than most of us predicted -- while the politicians in Washington behave like rutting stags with locked antlers.

- Timothy Garton Ash

topic: Thinking, Erosion, America, Stags, American Power

Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio - empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how - has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. Here at home - within the family, so to speak - our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.

- Daniel J. Boorstin

source: "The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations" by Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press, (p. 207), 1993.

topic: Attitude, Home, Two, Petulance, Foreign Relations

The realization that American power could and should be used for the defense of pluralism and as a punishment for fascism came to me in Sarajevo a year or two later... That was an early quarrel between me and many of my Nation colleagues, and it was also the first time I found myself in the same trench as people like Paul Wolfowitz and Jeane Kirkpatrick: a shock I had to learn to get over. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

- Christopher Hitchens

source: Interview with Jamie Glazov, historynewsnetwork.org. December 23, 2003.

topic: American Power

The American people are extraordinarily comfortable, affluent, and secure. It's easy for us to make the argument that God's purpose is being fulfilled through history and through the rise of American power. And to some degree, it probably is.

- Walter Russell Mead

topic: People, Degrees, Purpose, American Power

What they will try to do is get symbolic victories. Symbolism is important to them. They have little else. But they will strike, I believe, at centers of media, of financial, of American power, of American culture; and that is where we should place our bet.

- James T. Walsh

topic: Believe, Power, Media, American Culture, American Power

I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.

- Christopher Hitchens

topic: Psychopathic, American Power

I think that Hillary Clinton has an appreciation that American power needs to be put in the service of American values, which is an American tradition and a pretty good one, and I think she was willing to do that.

- Daniel Fried

source: Source: www.politico.com

topic: Appreciation, Thinking, Needs, American Values, American Power

We have a deep sense of American equality and opportunity, and that informs the way in which we brought our American power to the world, because we thought that other nations were entitled to that same opportunity in a rules-based system.

- Daniel Fried

source: Source: www.politico.com

topic: Opportunity, World, Way, American Power

The challenge to America is to extend to Asia the defensive shield of American power in forms consonant with Asian freedom and self-respect.

- Ferdinand Marcos

source: "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

topic: Self, America, Challenges, Consonants, American Power

When it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table. ... That includes all elements of American power: a political effort aimed at isolating Iran, a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored, an economic effort that imposes crippling sanctions and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

- Barack Obama

source: "Debate: Attacking Iran, AIPAC, Israel-Palestine and Obama with Rashid Khalidi and Jonathan Tobin", www.democracynow.org. March 5, 2012.

topic: Military, Iran, Political, Iranian, Obtaining

When Vladimir Putin runs up against American power and American criticism and American leadership that reminds him of what Russia isn`t, when he runs up against people who he worries are funding his dissidents or supporting protests against him, when he runs up against criticism of the way he runs his own country, what he`s running up against is the State Department.

- Rachel Maddow

source: Source: www.msnbc.com

topic: Running, Country, Russia, Dissidents, American Leadership