The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, as well as an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers. Profoundly inspirational American dream quotes will challenge the way you think, and make your life worth living.

If you’re searching for top inspirational quotes and quotes on priorities that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of powerful anticipation quotes, famous assuming quotes and top actions speak louder than words quotes.

Famous American Dream Quotes

American Dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams. Pico Iyer

John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Ronald Wright

I really have the American dream licked. Ted Nugent

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether. Hunter S. Thompson

I lived the true American dream, because I was able to pursue what I set as my goals at a very young age. Mario Andretti

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. George Monbiot

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps. Nipsey Hussle

And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare. Malcolm X

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work. Colin Powell

You’re just another american who is willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick being shoved up your asshole every day. The owners of this country know the truth it’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it! George Carlin

If you set goals and go after them with all the determination you can muster, your gifts will take you places that will amaze you. Les Brown

The assumption that you everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism. David Foster Wallace

Everyone must have a shot at the American Dream. Howard Schultz

I’ve always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn’t worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed. Howard Zinn

I’m in a weird band. We’ve done very well. The American Dream is alive and well. Gene Simmons

People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. That hundreds of thousands of white people are living, in effect, no better than the niggers is not a fact to be regarded with complacency. The social and moral bankruptcy suggested by this fact is of the bitterest, most terrifying kind. James Baldwin

I love the American dream. I feel this is the place I was supposed to be in. It’s beautiful. I love it. Immaculee Ilibagiza

Dat’s what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath America, the land of milk and honey. Bot they never tell you the milk’s gone sour and the honey’s stolen. Andre Dubus III

The American dream has always been about chasing opportunity and pursuing a brighter future for ourselves and our children. Jay Inslee

America is not so much a nightmare as a non dream. The American non dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non dreamers. William S. Burroughs

When it comes to the American dream, no one has a corner on the market. All of us have an equal chance to share in that dream. J. C. Watts

I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because he says I’m his ideal. F. Scott Fitzgerald

I’ve been living the American Dream for over 25 years just being able to do what I do, be creative, and make money out of it. It’s incredible. Dr. Dre

I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace for motionlessness  for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore, I hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying. Herman Melville

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream. Bruce Springsteen

Harry had worked his way through the American Dream and come to the conclusion that is was composed of a good lunch and a deep red wine that could soar. Colum McCann

If there is still an American dream, reading is one of the bootstraps by which we can all pull ourselves up. Karin Slaughter

The disruption of the anticipated American future that was simply to have unrolled out of the solid American past, out of each generation’s getting smartersmarter for knowing the inadequacies and limitations of the generations beforeout of each new generation’s breaking away from the parochialism a little further, out of the desire to go the limit in America with your rights, forming yourself as an ideal person who gets rid of the traditional Jewish habits and attitudes, who frees himself of the pre America insecurities and the old, constraining obsessions so as to live unapologetically as an equal among equals. Philip Roth

The American dream, what we were taught was, grow up, own a car, own a house. I think that dream’s completely changing. We were taught to keep up with the Joneses. Now we’re sharing with the Joneses. Brian Chesky

He was going to get the American Dream that even Americans dream about. Nicola Yoon

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. George Monbiot

I don’t really identify with America. I don’t really feel like an American or part of the American experience, and I don’t really feel like a member of the human race, to tell you the truth. I know I am, but I really don’t. All the definitions are there, but I don’t really feel a part of it. I think I have found a detached point of view, an ideal emotional detachment from the American experience and culture. George Carlin

Americans need a fresh reminder of the amazing nation they have and the power of liberties I see so often taken for granted. Ali Master

There never was a real thanksgiving where the pilgrims welcomed the native americans to join them for a meal. And no amount of fairytale can change history. But what we can do is, start a tradition of real thanksgiving, by welcoming the persecuted and the discriminated into our hearts and accepting them as our family. Abhijit Naskar

It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. George Carlin

Nowhere have I encountered such a dull and monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak. Henry Miller

Seeking the invisible through the imagery of the visible, the Americans never can get quite all the way to the end of the American dream. Lewis H. Lapham

To die comfortably, that is the true American dream. Jordan G Kobos

I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. Harlan Coben

Our neighbor, Jokai Neni, had two sons who were both locomotive engineers. They were my heroes, and I always ran out to greet them when they came home with their oily, sooty faces. John Czingula

I don’t want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it’s for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them. Penn Jillette

The American Way of Life! Eat too much, work too much, buy too much, read too little, think even less, and die in poverty and insecurity. No, thank you. Don’t you see that’s how Americans take over the world? Not just through their army and their CIA and their World Bank, but through this infectious disease called the American Dream? Viet Thanh Nguyen

Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one. Thomas Perez

The truth is, I do have a chance to fight for something in the place I came from. Something akin to what I continue to fight and hope for in America. Something bigger than myself. And yet, I stay. It’s a decision I continue to make, one that continues to haunt me. And even if it is a choice, there’s no weight in it. It’s meaningless apart from selfish intent. Trisha Low

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream. Archibald MacLeish

It’s okay to give up on a dream. The majority of dreams don’t come true. Our whole country is learning as much. Gary Shteyngart

The American Dream may be slipping away. We have overcome such challenges before. To recover the Dream requires knowing where it came from, how it lasted so long and why it matters so much. Jon Meacham

What America explores today, the world explores a decade later. Abhijit Naskar

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns bent down and helped us pick up our boots. Thurgood Marshall

American dream when he first heard the phrase as a kid he pictured God lying sleeping, the quilt colored map of the U.S. coming out of his head like a cloud. John Updike

I really love stand up. I’m more than happy to do it for nothing. I’ve come to America to do it for nothing. It’s the American Dream Work for free. John Oliver

Many of the new inventions and technology diluted the value of Nature and our human nature. Capital gains became more important than the proposed definition of the American Dream. I believe that if my parents’ generation had known of the consequences, they would have made some different choices. Donna Maltz

The American Dream is a phrase we’ll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we’re redefining it now. Rita Dove

Every American suffers from the fantasy that the American Dream is about to touch them with its magical golden scepter and elevate them into the stars, where they will live as gods. Of course, most of them end up in the gutter, in the company of every possible demon. Tom Strabo

We believe in the American Dream, not in the socialist nightmare. Donald Trump

Wanna study a superpower, study America. Wanna study dysfunctional power, still study America. Abhijit Naskar

He was going to get the American Dream that even Americans dream about. Nicola Yoon

It was a little past nine o’clock when I checked my watch at the entrance to his apartment building, a gray two story factory for manufacturing hundreds of tired replicas of the American Dream. All the inmates imagined their dreams to be unique, but they were merely tin reproductions of a lost original. Viet Thanh Nguyen

The American Dream was just then beginning to be defined by wealth at the expense of exploitable natural resources. Tammy Horn

The American dream of the Horatio Alger success story is completely meaningless to the Indian. To him it is simply an indication of a struggle for material values. what we have failed to take to him is our spiritual values. We must show by our behavior that we believe in equality and in justice and that our religion teaches faith and love and charity to our fellow men. Here is where each of us has a job to do that must be done at home, because we can lose the battle on the soil of the United States just as surely as we can lose it in any one of the other countries in the world. Eleanor Roosevelt

The Chinese dream is an American dream embedded in a Confucian cocoon. Patrick Mendis

If this isn’t the essential American story, I don’t know what is Guy hews a life out of nothing, by working every waking moment, with no education, no government help, no external advantages whatsoever, and no ulterior motive. What did he want? A place where his kids could grow up, with less fear and more material comforts. George Saunders

America is big enough to accommodate all their dreams. Barack Obama

Money comes from working hard I’ve come to believe is just a line rich people tell themselves to feel better. Lots of people work hard and get nothing. It’s just a myth Come to America, work hard, get rich, like dying and going to heaven. Dash Shaw

The American dream is what has kept Americans from rebelling against corporate corruption. Now that 2/3 of us know it’s dead, expect anything. Ziad K. Abdelnour

It is a time that calls forth the most picturesque of metaphors, for we are swimming along in the mythical underbelly of America there where it is soft and prickly, where you may rub your nose against the grainy sands of illusion and come up bleeding. Kathleen Collins

The American Dream is a constant reminder that America’s true nature and distinctive grandeur is in promising the common man, the man on the make, a better chance to succeed here than common men enjoy anywhere else on earth. Cal Jillson

The American dream of economic meritocracy where virtue is equated with wealth. Madison Hamill

The American Dream is not the nation’s promise of opportunity based on one’s ability and hard work alone. Instead, it is the uniquely American ability to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the nation will one day be willing to offer such an opportunity. Today, however, was not that day. Blair Bronwyn

My family is not running a marathon. We’re running a relay. My parents have gotten me this far. Everything I do is to get us further. I carry their hopes along with my own. Maria E. Andreu

What America explores today, the world explores a decade later. Abhijit Naskar

The American dream comes from opportunity. The opportunity comes from our founding principles, our core values that’s held together and protected by the Constitution. Those ideas are neither Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, white, or black. Those are American ideologies. Ted Yoho

If you are born in the States, you’ve won a geographical jackpot. If you are born in a rich family, you’ve won a hereditary jackpot. I had neither. So I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps and turned my name into a nationality of its own, and my life into a heritage of its own the nationality of assimilation, and the heritage of self determination. Abhijit Naskar

The American Dream is still alive out there, and hard work will get you there. You don’t necessarily need to have an Ivy League education or to have millions of dollars startup money. It can be done with an idea, hard work and determination. Bill Rancic

The twisted inversion that many children of immigrants know is that, at some point, your parents become your children, and your own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and die with dignity in a country that has never wanted them. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

The American Dream is independence and being able to create that dream for yourself. Marsha Blackburn

I thought the country I’d just described to them a hopeful, generous, courageous America, an America that was open to everyone. At about the same age as the graduates were now, I’d seized on that idea and clung to it for dear life. For their sake more than mine, I badly wanted it to be true. Barack Obama

The American Dream is a term that is often used but also often misunderstood. It isn’t really about becoming rich or famous. It is about things much simpler and more fundamental than that. Marco Rubio

The seven billion people on the plane don’t give a fuck what you want. They want you to program code for cool video games, they want you hot young girls to do porn, and they want you guys to like go build engineering and other stuff to make their lives easier. And they want food and they want it fast. Aaron Clarey

What I love about America is not necessarily the American Dream but the fact that there’s so much spirit of fighting to continue to dream once the dreams are broken. Chloe Zhao

Looking out over all that land, it amazed me not that America had fallen but that it had ever existed at all. Reed King

In the end, the American dream is not a sprint, or even a marathon, but a relay. Our families don’t always cross the finish line in the span of one generation. But each generation passes on to the next the fruits of their labor. Julian Castro

The suburban dream began innocently enough one and a half centuries ago, with a weariness of city life and a craving for all things green bright and pure. Nancy Rubin Stuart

I love entrepreneurship because that’s what makes this country grow, and if I can help companies grow, I am creating jobs; I am setting foundations for future generations. It sends the message that the American Dream is alive and well. Mark Cuban

All of it would be shattered, too. Because their life would be part of the lie that this country repeated to live with itself that fairness would prevail; that he laws protected everyone equally; that this land wasn’t stolen from Native peoples; that this wealth wasn’t built by industrious white men, our founders; that hardworking immigrants proved this was a meritocracy; that history should only be told from one point of view, that of those who won and still have power. So the city raged. Immolation was always a statement. Nancy Jooyoun Kim

You see, without hard work and responsibility, there is no American Dream. Richard Trumka

The United States is a land that, if you work hard and keep your dream alive, you may or may not achieve it. However, if you cheat, lie, manipulate, and bribe, you will definitely succeed. Kambiz Shabankare

This is the city of dreamers and time and again it’s the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed. Michael Bloomberg

As with Forrest Gump, my parents always did care about my education. Dmitry Dyatlov

The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep. Gerald R. Ford

They all sat still, all bemused by the beauty of the thing, each mind was popped into the future when this lovely thing should come about. John Steinbeck

That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it. George Carlin

The peril we face today is not only that America might fail to live up to its promise, but that Americans might stop believing in that promise or the need to fight for it. The increasing belief on the left that this promise was always a lie, or on the right that it has always been true and has already been achieved, are two sides of the same coin. Amy Chua

The truth is that I’ve always been fascinated with wealth in America. To me, it’s been about the American dream and the corruption of that dream. Leonardo DiCaprio

Yet the tranquil image of suburbias of the past remains, and continues to influence us, as do traditional concepts of femininity. Nancy Rubin Stuart

Most people are looking for security, a nice, safe, prosperous future. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s called the American Dream. Lee Iacocca

By the late 1840s, anticipation of a better life and the concept of progress had become an American touchstone, a national expectation. Nancy Rubin Stuart

We need men who can dream of things that never were. John F. Kennedy

The American Dream is not the nation’s promise of opportunity based on one’s ability and hard work alone. Instead, it is the uniquely American ability to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the nation will one day be willing to offer such opportunity. Today, however, was not that day. Blair Bronwyn

The American dream has now morphed into an expectation. And if it isn’t provided, or if it doesn’t happen, then people feel cheated. Rush Limbaugh

The hierarchy of most workplaces in America looks very much like climbing high mountains the higher you get, the whiter the scenery becomes. Louis Yako

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. John Steinbeck

My parents were really into the whole American Dream thing when I was growing up. They didn’t know that by the time we could attain it, the American Dream had morphed into something else entirely, and no one could pinpoint what it was anymore. But maybe that was the whole point. In America, the dream is whatever you think it is. Zhanna Slor

There’s nothing in the American dream about character. It’s a serious flaw. Mike Nichols

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