Quotes About Diversity

The first thing to realize is that if you have a large organization filled with a relatively homogenous population of employees, then that composition did not happen by chance.

Los Angeles, you've got to be more than the sum of your hats.

Mine will never be things of purity, strictly one or the other. I am multitude and mosaic. I will give of myself to this kindred land where no thing will ever be exclusively one or another. This is the boundary where all things merge in shades of mixture.

Teach boys that there are many ways to be a man.

It was more profitable building a bridge between riverbanks than between different races and religions.

Someone like me, with a D personality, is probably going to have trouble working with a C personality, because my personality type tends to be impatient, overbearing, and judgmental, and C personalities tend to be lazy nitwits.

As an aside: I urge you to count the non-white faces in that Halloween photo and consider the claim about "daring to be different.")

We often hear about how we need to be more tolerant: to make room for people, ideas, and actions with which we may not agree. This is a prerequisite for a functional democracy. But tolerance alone is not sufficient; it allows us to accept others without engaging with them, to feel smug and self-satisfied without challenging the boundaries within which too many of us live.

Art is an attempt to capture the truths of the world as you see it in a medium you can share with others. It is about lending your voice, your perspective to local, national, and global conversations. And that is why, in the United States in particular, our definition of what is art and who is an artist must be as varied as our citizenry.

We see elected officials pounding their chests, saying their vision of America represents the only real patriotism. To them I say that patriotism is not a cudgel. It is not an arms race.

I]nclusion, not assimilation, should be the key concept in seeking, ever seeking, a more perfect national union. Our own history has shown that we are stronger as a mosaic than a melting pot. Our nation is bound together more by ideals than by blood or land, and inclusion is in our cultural DNA. We should feel proud that we are not all the same, and that we can share our differences under the common umbrella of humanity.

But when you look at the demographic trends of the United States, Alaska is more a throwback to the past, and Hawaii a glimpse of the future.

New York is never a megalopolis of however many millions; it's always just your neighborhood—the shoe repair guy, the carpenter, the grocer, the post office—like any small town in Texas, really. (Dan Rather, from My First New York)

The idea of art as "access to independence and happiness" is a notion that speaks to my own experience. In art, you can find voices that channel your own life story better than you could ever express it yourself. And you can also find voices that introduce you to worlds you would never have otherwise visited. In a diverse republic such as ours, both of these inspirations are especially important.

We now understand that the great American story is not confined to history books or political speeches. It is sung, and danced, and dramatized, and turned into verse. It is painted, and sculpted, and written, and filmed. Artists may not swear an oath to serve in government or the military, but they swear an oath to freedom of expression that is no less worthy of recognition, especially in a democracy such as ours.

Our own history has shown that we are stronger as a mosaic than a melting pot.

I remember Mexican children, the sons and daughters of migrant farmworkers, starting each fall at my elementary school. By the time we got to Thanksgiving, the harvest and livestock roundups were complete, and all of those schoolmates would be gone.

How can people be so blinded by prejudice as to not see the common humanity?

We know that homosexuality is not limited to any race, religion, or socioeconomic class—it is part of human diversity.

And I saw how thoroughly these families embraced their American identity—they were patriots, just like the people with whom I had grown up. But they also understood that they were from another continent. This is one of the greatest lessons of our nation's improbable makeup: A united citizenry can be quilted together from so many different cultural fabrics.

The more we are around people with a variety of life experiences, the more we can understand and value the needs and worth of our fellow citizens.

requisite variety — the ability to survive under varied conditions. Often this means "fixing" input behind the scenes in code so that all the varied inputs conform to the format that the code/database needs

One man's blasphemy doesn't override other people's free-speech rights, their freedom to publish, freedom of thought.

The only way to get gay issues off the front pages of Canadian newspapers is to grant gay and lesbian people our full civil equality and leave it alone.