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People say America is exceptional. I agree, but it's not the complexion of our skin or the twists in our DNA that make us unique. America is exceptional because we were founded upon the notion that everyone should be free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

The notion of American exceptionalism is effective in part because there is little on the face of it that is offensive.

America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush.

And I think Americans are phenomenal people.

There's an appeal to the American sense of exceptionalism, that we're morally superior, as way to not be self-critical. I think that's a bit dangerous.

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.

It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.

I love 'The Americans.' I think it's one of the best shows on TV.

I find that Americans completely lack sensibility and good taste. They are boring, and they all have faces like unbaked rolls.

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order.