Quotes About Diversity

My father was a schoolteacher once before he became an engineer and breac is a word, he explains, that the Irish people brought with them when they were crossing over into the English language. It means speckled, dappled, flecked, spotted, coloured. A trout is brack and so is a speckled horse. A barm brack is a loaf of bread with raisins in it and was borrowed from the Irish words bairín breac. So we are the speckled-Irish, the brack-Irish. Brack home-made Irish bread with German raisins.

We are the brack children. Brack, homemade Irish bread with German raisins. We are the brack people and we don't just have one briefcase. We don't just have one language and one history.

dream in Irish. We laugh in Irish and we cry in German. We are silent in German and we speak in English. We are the speckled people.

Look at the people of Briançon!

I will fight for your right to be weird- just as I know you will fight for mine.

Most of my friends are into strange things I don't really understand - and with a few shameful exceptions I wish them all well. Who am I, after all, to tell some friend he shouldn't change his name to Oliver High, get rid of his family, and join a Satanism cult in Seattle? Or to argue with another friend who wants to buy a single-shot Remington Fireball so he can go out and shoot cops from a safe distance?

Maybe, God forbid, the place was what it appeared to be—a melange of Okies and thieves and bewildered jíbaros.

All the basic principles of Bhakti yoga are richly exemplified in Christianity. From the Hindu point of view, Christianity is one great brilliantly lit highway toward God, not greater than other paths, but more clearly marked. On this path God is conceived differently than in jnana yoga, where the guiding image was of an infinite sea of being underlying the waves of our finite selves. This sea typified the all-pervading Self, which is a much within us as without.

Because this second position is powered by the hope that there may someday be a single world religion, it is well to remind ourselves again of the human element in the religious equation. There are people who want to have their own followers. They would prefer to head their own flock, however small, than be second-in-command in the largest congregation. This suggests that if we were to find ourselves with a single religion tomorrow, it is likely that there would be two the day after. p386

people approach the goal from different directions, so there must be multiple trails to the common destination.

To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like claiming that God can be found in this room but not the next, in this attire but not another...Truth is one: sages call it by different names.

God has made different religions to suit different aspirations, times, and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion.

It is possible to climb life's mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge. p73

From the majestic pontifical High Mass in St. Peter's to the quiet simplicity of a Quaker meeting; from the intellectual sophistication of Saint Thomas Aquinas to the moving simplicity of spirituals such as Lord, I want to be a Christian; from St. Paul's in London, the parish Church of Great Britain, to Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta-- all this is Christianity.

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite

There's something very... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You've never changed sex, have you?' He shook his head. 'Or slept with a man?' Another shake. 'I thought so,' Yay said. 'You're strange, Gurgeh.' She drained her glass.

Do you wish to speak in Provençal, French, or Latin? They are all I can manage, I'm afraid. Any will do, the rabbi replied in Provençal. Splendid. Latin it is, said Pope Clement.

Of course there are some bad ones,' he said. 'Some of the worst anywhere. Harlem's the capital of the negro world. In any half a million people of any race you'll get plenty of stinkeroos.

Arrogance. We think we've been lovingly placed on this tiny spec of space dust by a benevolent father figure whose got a super special plan for each one of our lives, and afterlives. We also think He loves one particular group more than any other. Of course, which group that is depends on whether you're talking to Jews, Christians, or Muslims. Even

Pentecost] was not the reversal of Babel but its redemption.

beauty, she had discovered occupied a narrow band. Ugliness, on the hand, had infinite variation.

It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.

Novels without female characters were a lifeless desert.

Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness.