Quotes About Assimilation

Racism. . . . fuelled by bitter assertions that no immigrant ever has the least respect for the environment in his adopted country because he never really believes it's his.

American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralise every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency thoughtlessness, and optimism.

Aristotle, who believed that we become like the object of our contemplation.

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

1940s Jersey City childhood, "I grew up thinking America was an Italian country governed by the

It then became obvious that ethnic differences (like class distinctions) refused to boil away. Even fairly well established groups, such as Irish-Americans, often nursed old resentments and clung to neighborhood enclaves.

Only later did other scholars, notably Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan in their perceptive book Beyond the Melting Pot (1963), highlight the enduring power that ethnic identifications—what one eats, who one marries, where one lives, how one votes—had in the lives of the American people.53

My name is Adnan Nassar and I am Palestinian-American," he said in a rush. "I came to this country from Syria nine years ago and have since then earned American citizenship and am assistant manager of the Pizza Pad on Highway 6.

but somehow, despite my efforts, I am never able to blend myself in entirely and remain in some respects quite distinct from my surroundings, in the same way that a green chameleon remains a distinct entity from the green leaf upon which it sits, no matter how perfectly it has approximated the subtleties of the particular shade.

One's thought patterns become different...when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation.

Tips for aliens in New York: Land anywhere, Central Park, anywhere. No one will care or indeed even notice.

worked hard to blend himself into Earth society—with

Most every new man who came into the neighborhood had to be tried.

One gets infected, it is true, by the style of a work that one has been reading.

You're apt to be done down if you speak nothing but good American.

The mind, unlike a box, cannot simply filled whatever that you wish and then remove it once you decide it's a hazard leaving it unscathed. Rather, it's like a living being and what you put inside it gets ingested and assimilated. It becomes a part of it and to remove it takes a tremendous amount of consistent work and dedication only to realize that it was best not to have taken whatever it is in to begin with.

Head down, hoodie up, eyes on the ground. Be unimportant. Blend in.

I know a lot of companies that have a very well defined post-acquisition process. However, many of them don't take into consideration the dynamics and personalities of the acquiree. Instead, they assume that everyone will happily be assimilated.

Being a new character is like going to a new school. You have to try to maintain your own autonomy and your own personality.

Being American and being an outsider at the same time, it's a perspective I often bring to a character.

I'm comfortable, culturally I'm American, my perspectives are American, but from an aesthetic perspective do other people look at me and think that I'm American?

When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.

The industry loves to pigeonhole.

In many, many parts of the world, being a female, you're really just wallpaper. If you take care to blend in, no one would think in a thousand years that you were doing anything suspicious.