Quotes About Diversity

but hardly a customer had crossed her threshold in a fortnight, except two or three Jewish girls from downtown who came up regularly to have their hair straightened because it wouldn't stand inspection in the Nordic world.

The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions their reasons are always different.

A lemon tree was nearly universal; other trees varied with climate - almond trees in Adelaide and Perth, plums and apples in Melbourne, choke vines and bananas in Sydney and Brisbane, a mango in Cairns, figs and loquats everywhere. For a few weeks, there was a gross overabundance of fruit and much trading ('I'll take some of your plums if you take some of my apples next month').

An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.

The fantastically wasteful prodigality of human tongues, the Babel enigman, points to a vital multiplication of mortal liberties. Each language speaks the world in its own ways. Each edifies worlds and counter-worlds in its own mode. The polyglot is a freer man.

Ours is the ability, the need, to gainsay or 'un-say' the world, to image and speak it otherwise. In that capacity in its biological and social evolution, may lie some of the clues to the question of the origins of human speech and the multiplicity of tongues. It is not, perhaps, 'a theory of information' that will serve us best in trying to clarify the nature of language, but a 'theory of misinformation'.

It's really hard to hate someone for being different when you're too busy laughing together.

We should indeed keep calm in the face of difference, and live our lives in a state of inclusion and wonder at the diversity of humanity.

Being human means learning to see the common humanity in us all.

The truth is, you can find almost anything in the Bible to latch onto if you are really determined.

Humor has always been my tool of choice when confronting intolerance or ignorance, not only because "funny" material is much more likely to be shared (and thus seen), but also because I firmly believe we all, conservative or liberal, need to laugh more, even at ourselves, and even while standing up for our beliefs.

Today chemists can artificially make hundreds of thousands of organic compounds, most of which are not duplicated in nature.

Most talk of a catholic spirit but it is only till they have been brought into the pale of their own church. This is downright sectarianism, not Catholicism. How can I act consistently, unless I receive and love all the children of God, whom I esteem to be such, of whatever denomination they may be?

Happy countries are all alike; each unhappy country is unhappy in its own way, as has been written.

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

If some people want to believe in Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, or their ancestors, who is to say which is right and which wrong? It seems to me that most of the religions in the world are too dogmatic. They preach the 'live and let live' philosophy, but rarely do they practise it.

If you want my personal view I do not think it matters what you worship provided what you worship does no harm to others....You must remember always that one man's God may be another man's fairy tale, but both Gods and fairy tales have their place in the world.

In contrast to the traditional idea of creative discovery as great leaps into the unknown by the 'man of genius' - the exploration of the adjacent possible by diverse perspectives can explain autocatalytic innovation within the context of cultural learning and conformity. The growth of diversity is self-accelerating because the size of the possible exponentially increases with the dimensions of the attributes being tinkered with.

That Jews and Christians, together with Muslims, can live in amity, respecting differences while honoring commonalities—that this is no pipe dream—is proven by the fact that, for centuries, they did just that. —James Carroll1

My mother's mother's family moved north from Mexico after having migrated from Spain, from Portugal, from Ireland, and likely from an Indian village somewhere.

From the tiniest grain of sand to the brain of an Einstein, all existence, animate and inanimate, is the product of the same ninety-two elements that are themselves the harvest of the energy of the creation. At every turn an underlying commonality, a unity, emerges from within the diversity.

My mother's mother's family moved north from Mexico having migrated from Spain, from Portugal, from Ireland, and likely from an Indian village somewhere.

The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox. p. 361