Affirmative Quotes

• My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

  J. C. Watts

  Growing Up, Boys, Views

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• I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Baby, Yale, Perfect

  "Sotomayor Praises Affirmative Action". "Hannity" with Sean Hannity, www.foxnews.com. June 12, 2009.

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• I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Running, Race, Yale

  Sonia Sotomayor (2013). “My Beloved World”, p.191, Vintage

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• Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.

  Joe Klein

  Justice, Action, Racial Justice

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• Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.

  John Kasich

  Mean, Negative, Our Society

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• The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

  Hermann Hesse

  Sympathy, Death, Sweet

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Hermann Hesse: A Pictorial Biography”, p.218, Macmillan

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• I'm not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one's skin color or one's gender, I think it should be done based on one's need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid.

  J. C. Watts

  Believe, Kids, Thinking

  "J.C. Watts exits political arena". Interview with Paul Begala, www.cnn.com. November 15, 2002.

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• Whether or not the world would be vastly benefited by a total banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems not now an open question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Believe, Heart, Would Be

  Abraham Lincoln (1842). “An Address Delivered by Abraham Lincoln: Before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society at the Second Presbyterian Church, Springfield Illinois, on the 22d Day of February, 1842”, p.12

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• Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team.

  J. C. Watts

  Football, Strong, Team

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• If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for, then I'm for it.

  George W. Bush

  Humor, Mean, Political

  Third Debate: Page 10, abcnews.go.com. October 17, 2000.

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• We have to face the unpleasant as well as the affirmative side of the human story, including our own story as a nation, our own stories of our peoples. We have got to have the ugly facts in order to protect us from the official view of reality. Otherwise, we are squeezed empty and filled with what other people want us to think and feel and experience.

  Bill Moyers

  Thinking, Reality, Views

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• I am an affirmative action hire.

  Anna Quindlen

  Action, Affirmative Action

  "Anna Quindlen: Over 50, And Having 'Plenty Of Cake'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, kcur.org. April 24, 2012.

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• Preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women, and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own. Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country.

  Alan Keyes

  Country, Rights, Doe

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• Action eradicates fear. No matter what you fear,--- positive, self-affirming action can diminish or completely cancel that which you are fearful of.

  Mark Victor Hansen

  Inspirational, Positive, Fear

  FaceBook post by Mark Victor Hansen from Sep 04, 2013

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• Here's the point - you're looking at affirmative action, and you're looking at marijuana. You legalize marijuana, no need for quotas, because really, who's gonna wanna work?

  Jon Stewart

  Marijuana, Needs, Quota

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• White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Flower, Color White, Shining

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• The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.

  Harold Washington

  Action, Fallacy, Thirds

  Harold Washington, Alton Miller (1988). “Climbing a Great Mountain: Selected Speeches of Mayor Harold Washington”

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• You have to give access to people with disabilities but there is no requirement to hire them. What I mean by affirmative obligation is that producers must take the necessary steps to include opportunities for people with disabilities and a vast majority of them do.

  Richard Masur

  Mean, Opportunity, People

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• It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

  John Burroughs

  Believe, Optimism, Mind

  John Burroughs (1900). “Writings: The light of day”

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• In the final analysis courage is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence, to the shocks which it is necessary to bear for the sake of realizing one's own nature.

  Kurt Goldstein

  Courage, Bravery, Finals

  "Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology".

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• Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.

  Andrew Young

  Effort, Decision, Action

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• If you don't like affirmative action, what is your plan to guarantee a level playing field of opportunity?

  Maynard Jackson

  Opportunity, Level Playing Field, Guarantees

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• There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Motivation, Balance, Trying

  "Videotaped remarks shed light on Sotomayor" by Charlie Savage, www.sfgate.com. June 11, 2009.

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• Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place.

  Harold Washington

  Political, Needs, Never Quit

  Harold Washington, Alton Miller (1988). “Climbing a Great Mountain: Selected Speeches of Mayor Harold Washington”

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• Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach.

  Susan Estrich

  Moving, Time To Move On, Action

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