As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in? Alexis de Tocqueville
National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right. Arthur Schopenhauer
We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it. George Washington
I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character. Herbert Hoover
Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS. Thomas Paine
The true key to the declension of the Roman empire - which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work - may be stated in two words: - the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation. Samuel Taylor Coleridge