Quotes About Pluralism

Twenty five percent of Israeli citizens are not even Jewish. Anybody can become an Israeli citizen if you qualify. Religion is not a criterion for citizenship.

Civilization is the encouragement of differences. — Mahatma Gandhi

One of the things non-aboriginal Canadians learned from aboriginal people over the last 400 years is you don't have to be one thing. That's a European idea. There's multiple personalities, multiple loyalties. You can be a Winnipegger, a Manitoban, a Westerner.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.

I'm very wary of large groups of people getting together and trying to believe the same thing. It never seems to end well, whether it's political or religious or whatever.

All were free, the commissioner declared—Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians—to observe their own religious and social customs, but none would be permitted to meddle with those of their neighbours.

Many in the world picture a threat from what they see as a monolithic Muslim world, when in fact that world is sharply divided.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many.

The plural, inclusive, idea of India has three enemies. The best known is the notion of a Hindu Rashtra, as represented in an erratic fashion by the Bharatiya Janata Party and in a more resolute (or more bigoted) manner by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and other associated organisations.

Rabindranath Tagore used the phrase in a letter to a friend in 1921, writing that '…the idea of India is against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one's own people from others, which inevitably leads to ceaseless conflicts.

and Bengali literature – in sum, 'an awesome polyglot, the

India incorporates a greater variety of religions (whether born in its soil or imported) than any other nation in human history.

Americans in the 1770s were sharply divided according to religion, national origin, location, and even language. Scots Irish Presbyterians in North Carolina, English American Anglicans in Virginia, Dutch and German Mennonites in Pennsylvania, Scottish Highlander Catholics in New York, native-born Congregationalists in Massachusetts—each group had its own culture, its own beliefs, its own set of interests.

Oh, I think Canadians look like all sorts of people. That's the beauty of Canada.

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.

We are no longer a nation of one church; we are a nation of many churches.

Segregated schools. Children are educated, again often from a very early age, with members of a religious in-group and seperately from children whose families adhere to other religions.

People worship different things; there must be 'no coercion in matters of faith!

We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education.

America is not a white man's republic.

It seems to me that a great university ought to have room in it for men subscribing to every sort of idea that is currently prevalent

The more composed scenes are like elevator music compared to some of the more dynamic styles of music. One is not better than the other. They both deserve their spots in the world.

Everybody is unique and different. Nobody is the same as anyone else. there is no 'normal' - it is a lie taught to us by a system so flawed that it is threatened by the awesome diversity of nature.