Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

My dad's American, and my mom's French. I lived in France for the first 18 years of my life, then came here to go to school at the College of William and Mary. I studied marketing. I really didn't know what I wanted to do, so I thought that's what I should do - study business - because it would give me the best chance to find work.

Thousands of Americans are forced to join unions as a condition of employment, with little to no chance of ever having their voices heard.

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.

A manufacturing resurgence is what will give local communities and small towns across America a fighting chance for survival. Many of today's American entrepreneurs come from those very places but make their wealth elsewhere. We need to change that.

The beauty of our democracy lies in the American value of equality: if you vote, you have a seat at the table. If you speak, you have a chance to persuade others. A billionaire and a minimum wage earner have the same power at the ballot box.

What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal - that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

I'm an American songbook guy, though I've got eclectic tastes. I really love the American songbook. I've taken up the ukulele, and so you can play 'Five Foot Two' and Hawaiian music, but you can also do some of the great tunes, like 'You Go to My Head,' 'I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,' 'Taking a Chance on Love.'

Americans are fighters. We're tough, resourceful and creative, and if we have the chance to fight on a level playing field, where everyone pays a fair share and everyone has a real shot, then no one - no one can stop us.

One of the great upsides to a national book tour is the chance to break out of television's cocoon and interact directly with the American people.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

As the Olympic torch neared Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980, signaling the opening of that year's Winter Olympics, newspapers and magazines throughout the world offered predictions on who would win medals in the major sports. Not a single publication gave the American men's hockey team a chance against the world powers.

Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel, not just to be as good as someone else but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

'Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream' is an intentionally angry film. How could it not be when the chance of an infant dying is five times greater on the Bronx Park Avenue than on Manhattan's Park Avenue just across the Harlem River?

The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.

When I became 'The American Dream,' they needed a hero down here. I had no money - I couldn't buy a car without being tied under - but I had to have a Cadillac with blue stars on the hood no matter what it cost because just driving in it will set how they look at me and perceive this guy; they'll know.

American stuntmen are smart - they think about safety. When they do a jump in a car, they calculate everything: the speed, the distance... But in Hong Kong, we don't know how to count. Everything we do is a guess. If you've got the guts, you do it. All of my stuntmen have gotten hurt.

U.S. industries from steel-making to plastics synthesis are among the world's most energy-efficient; American agriculture is highly productive, as are America's railroads. But for decades, Americans themselves have been living beyond their means, wasting energy in their houses and cars and amassing energy-intensive throwaway products on credit.

By the end of the 1950s, American cars were so reliable that their reliability went without saying even in car ads. Thousands of them bear testimony to this today, still running on the roads of Cuba though fueled with nationalized Venezuelan gasoline and maintained with spit and haywire.

Now, if most Americans want to go out and buy a car, they don't say, you know, 'I think I'll call the chairman of the board of Ford Motor Company and see what kind of deal we can make here.'

I started training at a local gym in New Jersey, and the day of my high school graduation, I packed up everything in my car and moved to Coconut Creek, Florida, where I trained with one of the best gyms in the world, American Top Team.

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.