Quotes About Assimilation

I am American. If you drop me in Seoul, I don't think I'm going to thrive there.

Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.

Throughout its history, Islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations, both ancient and modern.

The cultural pressure for a middle-class Chinese-American to walk, talk and act like a lower-class thug from Chinatown is nil. The same can be said of Jews, or of any other ethnic group. But in black America the folly is so commonplace it fails to attract serious attention.

Thus, biologically speaking the American people are literally only half an immigrant people.

Being a Middle Eastern girl in America with a name no one could pronounce was not easy, so I turned to make-up and cosmetics as a way to deal with my insecurities, thus creating my long-term relationship with beauty.

The tide of immigration in Canada has not been as great as along our frontier. They have been able to allow the Indians to live as Indians, which we have not, and do not attempt to force upon them the customs which are distasteful to them.

When you are at Rome live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.

When he's connected up to your nervous system, you'll be able to make him whistle, hiss, roar, flap his wings, and spit sparks, though it may take a few days to assimilate him into your body picture. Don't be surprised if at first he just burps and looks seasick. Take your shirt off, please.

People adjust their behavior to fit the society they live in. They integrate because they have to. But what they are on the inside doesn't change.

I guess my ideals died the hardest. It's often that way with the children of immigrants. We need to buy the dream so bad we sometimes can't wake up.

It is strange that what seems at first alien becomes second nature in the blink of an eye.

Human beings can get used to virtually anything, given plenty of time and no choice in the matter whatsoever.

Everything has been homogenized. Over time, with television and jet travel, everybody has blended together. Some of our wonderful charm has been lost.

By the time you rise through the ranks, the culture of homogenization has bred the spirit and imagination out of you.

To beguile the time, look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.

It will take time to adapt, but I think I can handle it.

A guest of one's time and not a member of the household.

It was an old kender proverb—Don't change color to match the walls. Look like you belong and the walls will change color to match you.

Don't change color to match the walls. Look like you belong and the walls will change color to match you.

In America, since we are an immigrant country, our "nativists" may be first- or second-generation Americans whose parents or grandparents were themselves considered suspect on these same grounds. It is almost as interesting as it is disheartening to learn that nativist rhetoric can have impact in a country where precious few can claim to be native in any ordinary sense.

Había dejado de ser un peruano en muchos sentidos, sin duda. ¿Qué era, entonces? Tampoco había llegado a ser un europeo, ni en Francia, ni mucho menos en Inglaterra. ¿Qué eras, pues, Ricardito?

The harder I tried to assimilate, the more I had the feeling that I was distancing myself from my culture, betraying my parents and my origins, that I was playing a game by somebody else's rules.

Nobody can easily bring together a nation that has 265 kinds of cheese' (Charles de Gaulle, 1961 speech)