Quotes About Assimilation

I can't tell you how scary it can be walking onto a movie and suddenly joining this family, it's like going to somebody else's Christmas dinner, everyone knows everyone, and you're there and you're not quite sure what you're supposed to be doing.

The intermingling in the school of youth of different races, differing religions, and unlike customs creates for all a new and broader environment. Common subject matter accustoms all to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon than is visible to the members of any group while it is isolated. The assimilative force of the American public school is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of the common and balanced appeal.

When you're a foreigner, at the beginning you are far away from the culture. Then, little by little, you start to interact with people, have friends, have a life, and then you feel more comfortable.

They decided to let immigrants in and I am an immigrant. They gave us a chance to participate in this country's life and I took it.

Life may be defined to be the power of self-augmentation or assimilation, not of self-nurture; for then a steam-engine over a coal-pit might be made to live.

Death is a part of life, and eventually I assimilated that completely.

You're sort of forced to include this aspect of culture into your life whether it be for social reasons or business purposes.

We make it especially hard for others to observe our trait because we are so responsive to our environments that we can be something like chameleons when around others, doing whatever it takes to fit in. I

We make it especially hard for others to observe our trait when it means we are observing and not "behaving," at least at first. Further, we are so responsive to our environments that we can be something like chameleons when around others, doing whatever it takes to fit in.

Others knew they were different, but hid it and adapted, acting like the non-sensitive majority.

Further, we are so responsive to our environments that we can be somewhat like chameleons when around others, doing whatever it takes to fit in.

What was the relationship between leaving the country and an aesthetic life? What was it about America in particular that seemed to make one's life unaesthetic?

I felt dissatisfied, as if I was failing to capitalize on some advantage I had from "being" Turkish—one that would compensate for the hassle of having a name and appearance that had always required explanation. It had, I realized, been a real disappointment to get to Turkey and to discover that my name and appearance still required constant explanation

Taking our knowledge to heart and really living it, however, can be difficult, as Seneca illustrated with a literally colourful analogy: 'Just as some dyes are readily absorbed by the wool, others only after repeated soaking and simmering, so there are some studies that show up well in our minds as soon as we have learned them; this one, though, must permeate us thoroughly. It must soak in, giving not just a tinge of color but a real deep dye, or it cannot deliver on any of its promises.

We are now integrated into American society and I don't like the word fashionable, because fashionable means that it's going to pass. It's not like that anymore.

His entire life in India had become irrelevant and meant nothing. Not his own achievements, not his family's affluence, everything was beyond the curtain of mirrors with which America bounded itself. Nothing beyond mattered. Here he had to recreate himself, but the basic building block of his new persona was his colour.

The great thing about America is I've never felt like an outsider. I'm just a different piece of the puzzle.

I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me.

While I was growing up in Flushing, Queens, we socialized exclusively with other Chinese immigrants. I was forbidden to make contact with nonapproved, non-Chinese peers outside school. That was fine with me.

For a lot of children of immigrants, what happens is your parents want you to do something very linear that they can understand. I had an aptitude in sciences and never really questioned it.

When you change teams, cities or countries it's obvious there's a period of adaption, but some players can adapt quicker than others.

No police department should hire more quickly than they can assimilate the people that they bring in, and we did. I take responsibility for it. It was the first opportunity I had to hire, and I wanted to do it, and I take responsibility.

I learned English, my sixth language at this point, quite quickly.

When people move from poor countries to America, they quickly adapt in at least one way - their consumption habits.