Quotes About Diversity

Being half Jewish, we grew up with Christmas trees but had Jewish ornaments.

One of the shocking things when I go back to Canada is they cut off the tall trees - it's sort of like everyone's the same. Everyone's going to be the same, we're all okay. Just the, sort of, cultural, 'We're all okay.'

Like people, trees are all individuals.

So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship.

I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.

It's impossible for most black Americans to construct full family trees. Official census records, used by so many genealogy enthusiasts to piece together their families' pasts, don't include our non-European ancestors.

Some theatres back home used to screen arthouse films by Adoor and Shyam Benegal, and week-long festivals of films from France, Germany and the U.S.S.R. That was when I realised there was a world where people did not run around trees singing duets. That it was possible to make a different kind of cinema.

I have about 1,700 species of trees, almost everything that can grow in our climate.

I love running around trees as much as a serious role.

'Star Trek' was an attempt to say humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in lifeforms.

Feminists are like the Borg from 'Star Trek.' They don't know anything about other groups beyond the fact that they need to be assimilated into a hivemind that mindlessly follows the orders of a Queen.

It takes a certain kind of person who loves 'Star Trek' to bring it to life.

All I ever wanted to do when I was a kid was be in a Broadway musical and to be in 'Star Trek,' and I can finally say I've done that.

I'm aware that I'm playing one of the first LGBT characters on 'Star Trek' in the first relationship, so there's a responsibility that comes with that. I'm aware of that.

Gene Roddenberry continually reminded us that the Star Trek Enterprise was a metaphor for starship Earth. And the strength in this starship came from its diversity, coming together and working in concert as a team. That is the strength of our countries, Canada and the United States. We are nations of diversity.

Up until the time I was cast in 'Star Trek,' the roles were pretty shallow - thin, stereotyped, one-dimensional roles. I knew this character was a breakthrough role, certainly for me as an individual actor but also for the image of an Asian character: no accent, a member of the elite leadership team.

As a fan of the franchise, I count myself among the countless LGBTQ fans who have longed to see themselves and our relationships depicted on 'Star Trek.'

Doesn't anybody ever want to talk about anything else besides 'Star Trek?' There were 79 episodes of the series; there were 55 different writers. I was only one of them.

One of the reasons that I accepted, once asked to do Star Trek, was to give a single child a chance to see the long thought, to see themselves some 400 years hence. It occurred to me that we must ensure that we keep in front of children the ever-changing horizon.

Which is good, in a way, because the danger in doing something like STAR TREK is that you end up in that pigeonhole and you're doing that the rest of your life.

'Star Trek' fans totally accepted my sexual orientation. There are a great number of LGBT people across 'Star Trek' fandom. The show always appealed to people that were different - the geeks and the nerds, and the people who felt they were not quite a part of society, sometimes because they may have been gay or lesbian.

'Star Trek' is about acceptance, and the strength of the Starship Enterprise is that it embraces diversity in all its forms.

What's impressed me about 'Star Trek' fans is how many generations they span and how many nations they represent. They are all over the place.

'Star Trek' works for me because it deals with the petty issues of humankind.