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Americans are good at pursuing happiness. And the Americans who pursue happiness most diligently show that we're also good at running it down and killing it.

One can not be an American by going about saying that one is an American. It is necessary to feel America, like America, love America and then work.

There is something very unique in American iconography about this notion of the pursuit of happiness.

America offers the most amount of people the best opportunity to pursue happiness on the planet. That's why millions of illegal immigrants have poured into the country - most of them poor. They believe they have a shot to improve themselves economically.

My grandfather always told me, 'You know you're American first, but you're a Greek-American, which makes you a better American.' It sounds sort of old-world and very sweet, but what he meant was that you should embrace those things that are most special and different about you.

The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.

Americans generally regard themselves as belonging to an exceptional nation. And in terms of living in a religiously tolerant and enormously diverse country, Americans can certainly take some justified pride.

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others.

People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.