Diversity Quotes - Page 14

• The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

  Maya Angelou

  Justice, Racism, Mind

  Maya Angelou (2011). “Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now”, p.57, Bantam

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• The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

  Maya Angelou

  Block, Ghetto, Men

  "Bill Moyers Journal", billmoyers.com. November 21, 1973.

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• Living on borders and in margins, keeping intact one's shifting and multiple identity and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an "alien" element.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Integrity, Justice, Swim

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• The church must never become a government factory, carrying on a nationalized industry of religion with the people as the bolts and nuts; with God reduced to the role of cramped advocate of current national policy. Surely the pages of history are replete and the examples in many a foreign country convincing that this kind of church-state union-whatever the original motives, or however noble the original purposes-winds up with a state that is less than stable and a church that is less than sanctified, and with the poor still hungry.

  Glenn Archer

  Country, Wind, Nuts

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• Man's chief moral deficiency appears to be not his indiscretions but his reticence.

  Hannah Arendt

  Memorable, Men, Justice

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• Teaching is the highest form of understanding.

  Aristotle

  Educational, Teaching, Justice

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• To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.

  Aristotle

  Thinking, Justice, Culture

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• It's an abnormal world I live in. I don't belong anywhere. It's like I'm floating down the middle. I'm never quite sure where I am.

  Arthur Ashe

  Justice, Floating, Culture

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• Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

  Mary Astell

  Justice, Liberty, Gold

  'An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex' (1696) p. 25

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• I have no objections to churches so long as they do not interfere with God's work.

  Brooks Atkinson

  Long, Justice, Atheism

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• In order to have a conversation with someone you must reveal yourself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Order, Justice, Culture

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• The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

  James A. Baldwin

  Men, White Man, Justice

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• Our dehumanization of the Negro then is indivisible from our dehumanization of ourselves; the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.

  James A. Baldwin

  Loss, Justice, Identity

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• Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

  James A. Baldwin

  Justice, Culture, Slave

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• The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

  James A. Baldwin

  Land, Ties, Justice

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• Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Recovery, Justice

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• It is a very grave matter to be forced to imitate a people for whom you know-which is the price of your performance and survival-you do not exist. It is hard to imitate a people whose existence appears, mainly, to be made tolerable by their bottomless gratitude that they are not, thank heaven, you.

  James A. Baldwin

  Gratitude, People, Justice

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• What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors. It's astounding to me, for example, that so many people really appear to believe that the country was founded by a band of heroes who wanted to be free. That happens not to be true. What happened was that some people left Europe because they couldn't stay there any longer and had to go somewhere else to make it. That's all. They were hungry, they were poor, they were convicts. Those who were making it in England, for example, did not get on the Mayflower. That's how the country was settled.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Believe, Hero

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• If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free.

  James A. Baldwin

  Giving, Justice, Risk

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind". www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• To be born in a free society and not to be born free is to be born into a lie. To be told by co-citizens and co-Christians that you have no value, no history, have never done anything that is worthy of human respect destroys you because in the beginning you believe it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Christian, Lying, Believe

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• The miracle is that some have stepped out of the rags of the Republic's definition to assume the great burden and glory of their humanity and their responsibility for one another. It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it leaving the jailkeeper in the rubble.

  James A. Baldwin

  Wall, Responsibility, Color

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• The real victim of bigotry is the white man who hides his weakness under his myth of superiority.

  James A. Baldwin

  Real, Men, White Man

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• Black! Black! Black! I am proud of being a Negro. Nor have I ever tried to beg tolerance from anyone. Superiority is not proved by color, but by the brain, by education, by willpower, by moral courage.

  Jose Celso Barbosa

  Education, Color, Justice

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• The absurd man is he who never changes.

  Auguste-Marseille Barthelemy

  Change, Men, Justice

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  When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Men, Justice, Culture

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