Quotes About Diversity

The common objective of populist politicians in both Europe and the United States is to "take back our country." They argue that traditional understandings of national identity are being diluted and overtaken both by newcomers with different values and cultures and by a progressive left that attacks the very idea of national identity as racist and intolerant. But

While the United States has benefited from diversity, it cannot build its national identity around diversity as such. Identity has to be related to substantive ideas such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and human equality. Americans respect these ideas; the country is justified in excluding from citizenship those who reject them.

At the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, only white males with property had full political rights; the circle of rights bearers gradually expanded to include white men without property, African-Americans, indigenous people, and women.

Over recent decades, the European left had come to support a form of multiculturalism that downplayed the importance of integrating immigrants into the national culture. Under the banner of antiracism it looked the other way from evidence that assimilation wasn't working. The new populist right, for its part, looks back nostalgically at a fading national culture that was based on ethnicity or religion, a culture that was largely free of immigrants or significant diversities.

In democratic societies we assert, with the American Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal." Yet historically, we have disagreed on who qualifies as "all men." At the time that the declaration was signed, this circle did not include white men without property, black slaves, indigenous Americans, or women.

On the right, plenty of new white nationalist voices would like to drag the country backward to an identity once again based on race, ethnicity, or religion. It is urgent that

Unrepresentative interest groups are not simply creatures of corporate America and the Right. Some of the most powerful organizations in democratic countries have been trade unions, followed by environmental groups, women's organizations, advocates of gay rights, the aged, the disabled, indigenous peoples, and virtually every other sector of society.

The remedy is to define larger and more integrative national identities that take account of the de facto diversity of existing liberal democratic societies.

The nation will continue to be a central pole of identification, even if more and more nations come to share common economic and political forms of organization.

It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality. It's like disapproving of rain.

Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.

Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction.

Nature is unfair? So much the better, inequality is the only bearable thing, the monotony of equality can only lead us to boredom

Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia

Today, we have discovered that everyone is born with dozens of genetic glitches. There are no perfect human specimens. But not all our glitches are the same, so one treatment often does not fit all sufferers of a given disease.

Los grupos económicos pueden definirse como un conjunto de empresas de naturaleza y especialidades diversas, dirigidas de acuerdo a una política común […], manteniendo éstas, al interior del grupo su autonomía jurídica» (el énfasis es nuestro) (Anaya, 1990, p. 19).

Después de cuarenta años de españolismo franquista, la verdad es que vivimos y respiramos muy a gusto siendo sencillamente españoles.

A true dancer is not a dancer, it is all possible dancers, including all non-dancers, it is all and nothing at the same time, as well as someone or something, as a result of a conscious choice

Each country has a soul, and France's soul is equality.

Of all religions, Christianity is without a doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

We find comfort among those who agree with us--growth among those who don't.

We're all generous, but with different things, like time, money, talent -- criticism.

doctrinal conceptions among Pentecostals are too diverse to provide us with that which is theologically distinctive to the movement.

The one joy that has kept me going through life has been the fact that stories unite us. To see you as you listen to me now, as you have always listened to me, is to know this: what I can believe, you can believe. And the way we all see our story-not just as Irish people but as flesh and blood individuals and not the way people tell us to see it-that's what we own, no matter who we are and where we come from.