Minorities Quotes

1. "The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be."
Author: Abba Eban

2. "The political function of 'the right of free speech' is to protect dissenters and unpopular minorities from forcible suppression - not to guarantee them the support, advantages, and rewards of a popularity they have not gained."
Author: Ayn Rand

3. "The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
Author: Ayn Rand

4. "We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities."
Author: Barbra Streisand

5. "Through the ages, many different groups have called themselves victims. Some came through wars and massacres. Some were slaves or minorities. But the Jews, who have always been victimized throughout history, don't see themselves as victims. We see ourselves as survivors. The difference between survivors and victims is that survivors go on with their lives after a tragedy, whereas victims continue to wallow in self-pity."
Author: Celso Cukierkorn

6. "Oppression Olympics is what smart liberal Americans say to make you feel stupid and to make you shut up. But there IS an oppression olympics going on. American racial minorities - blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Jews - all get shit from white folks, different kinds of shit but shit still. Each secretly believes that it gets the worst shit. So, no, there is no United League of the Oppressed. However, all the others think they're better than blacks because, well, they're not black."
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

7. "What's so phony nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn't any difference between people —well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?"
Author: Christopher Isherwood

8. "Social Security makes up a much larger share of total retirement income for unmarried women and minorities than it does for married couples, unmarried men and whites."
Author: Diane Watson

9. "I try hard to convince them it's important - but there's a history of discomfort with minorities voting in some parts of this country, so most especially the older people have to get accustomed to it."
Author: Eddie Bernice Johnson

10. "This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

11. "One wonders how much real conversation there is when one party does not, in many districts, have to contend for the votes of minorities, and the other can only elevate minorities into positions of power when the political wind is blowing in its direction."
Author: Garrance Franke Ruta

12. "Look at television and how comparatively few minorities are out there."
Author: Gedde Watanabe

13. "If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them."[Freedom of the Park, Tribune, 7 December 1945]"
Author: George Orwell

14. "I didn't think past the first step of anything, that was the key. I drank a Coke and didn't worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddling in my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movie and I didn't worry about the offensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningful roles. I didn't even worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy."
Author: Gillian Flynn

15. "Back when I was looking for my next step and was researching Gannett, I was interested in who was leading the various businesses within the organization: Are there a lot of women and minorities in important, operational roles, senior management and the board of directors?"
Author: Gracia Martore

16. "When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else."
Author: Gwendolyn Brooks

17. "The American Government is in fact enforcing a system of employment on the universities under which they are required, under pain of bankruptcy, to employ members of minority groups in spite of the fact that a better qualified member of a non-minority group is applying for the job...Quotas were considered undesirable when they were used against minority groups; they do not become desirable when they are used against majority groups. Positive discrimination, so called, is still discrimination against somebody; one man`s positive discrimination is another man`s negative discrimination. Furthermore, who shall define a minority?...Why are some minorities more minor than others?"
Author: Hans Jürgen Eysenck

18. "That fallacy flies in the face of studies that show, every day, in every way, things are getting a little worse for America's minorities relative to the progress made by those in the top percentiles of assets and income."
Author: Harold Washington

19. "It's not my victory, it's yours and yours and yours. If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We've given them hope."
Author: Harvey Milk

20. "I want companies who get federal contracts to hire more women and minorities from the local area."
Author: Hilda Solis

21. "We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have a sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be."
Author: James Baldwin

22. "One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights."
Author: James K. Polk

23. "Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression."
Author: James K. Polk

24. "In 1969, when I graduated from Harvard Law School, women and minorities made up a tiny fraction of the first year associates accepted by top law firms."
Author: Jane Harman

25. "The whole of that part of Southern Africa which is controlled by racial minorities is experiencing either consistent and regular guerilla activity or is faced with advanced preparation for its commencement."
Author: Joe Slovo

26. "At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success."
Author: John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

27. "[Smiley contemplates graffiti:]'Punk is destructive. Society does not need it.' The assertion caused him a moment's indecision. 'Oh, but society does,' he wanted to reply; 'society is an association of minorities."
Author: John Le Carré

28. "The purpose of a college education is to give you the correct view of minorities, and the means to live as far away from them as possible."
Author: Joseph Sobran

29. "George W. Bush brought a lot of minorities into his administration, which was a positive thing, and they had some issues that they wanted to press, but 9/11 really gave them direction. It gave them a purpose."
Author: Josh Brolin

30. "We have a multiheaded dragon in our midst that for too long has been waging a domestic war on our young, our poor, our elderly, and our underserved. The faces of this dragon sometimes manifest themselves as poverty, the source of the most pervasive health problem we have in America. Sometimes they manifest themselves as diseases such as AIDS, sometimes as violence, and sometimes of racism, sexism, and classism. For too long our "isms" have pushed our young, our poor, and our minorities to the back of the social justice bus. I think it is time for us to ask the question "Do we feel that every American should have a right to health care?" In our society, we feel that every criminal has a right to a lawyer. Shouldn't we feel that every sick person has right to a doctor?"
Author: Joycelyn Elders

31. "I think that most minorities have experienced some form of racial abuse."
Author: Lynn Swann

32. "Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice."
Author: Lysander Spooner

33. "Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites."
Author: Michael Eric Dyson

34. "People who wanted to change America back to how it used to be. Not an America with the segregation that was part of the past. Americans were all past that. Not an America with discrimination against minorities or women. America was past that, as well. But back to a country where a man's worth was determined by his character and his work ethic, where a man's word was his bond. Where people worked for a living, instead of trying to work the system. Where families lived and worked together on farms and in communities, instead of crowding into huge metropolises where every need was trucked in, piped in, and plugged in, and people were tuned in, turned on, online, and lined up for all their needs but did not speak to each other on the street or know their own neighbors or families."
Author: Mike Foster

35. "It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities."
Author: Paul Wolfowitz

36. "I think it is the weak and the young and the minorities that you need to look after to get a healthy creative environment - to get a lot of choices, a lot of different styles of music, a lot experimental stuff that everyone else feeds off."
Author: Peter Gabriel

37. "Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole"
Author: Ralph Nader

38. "Now let's take up the minorities in our civilisation, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!"
Author: Ray Bradbury

39. "For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water conservationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals which to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall."
Author: Ray Bradbury

40. "The Covenant of the League of Nations had envisaged sponsoring only the protection of certain categories of men: national minorities and populations of territories controlled by other countries."
Author: Rene Cassin

41. "Darwinism is not a theory of random chance. It is a theory of random mutation plus non-random cumulative natural selection. . . . Natural selection . . . is a non-random force, pushing towards improvement. . . . Every generation has its Darwinian failures but every individual is descended only from previous generations' successful minorities. . . . [T]here can be no going downhill - species can't get worse as a prelude to getting better. . . . There may be more than one peak."
Author: Richard Dawkins

42. "It's always the minorities who aren't a part of the mainstream who define what the limits... of the majority are going to be."
Author: Rose Bird

43. "I've gotten death threats, yes. I have. I think anytime you shine a spotlight on homosexuality or minorities and you try and say they are as normal or as worthy as acceptance as others, the people who are on the fringe don't like that and they will come after you. And they have come after me."
Author: Ryan Murphy

44. "I am a Dalit in Khairlanji. A Pandit in the Kashmir valley. A Sikh in 1984. I am from the North East of India when I am in Munirka. I am a Muslim in Gujarat; a Christian in Kandhamal. A Bihari in Maharashtra. A Delhi-wallah in Chennai. A woman in North India. A Hindi-speaker in Assam. A Tamilian in MP. A villager in a big city. A confused man in an indifferent world. We're all minorities.We all suffer; we all face discrimination. It is only us resisting this parochialism when in the position of majoritarian power that makes us human. I hope that one day, I can just be an Indian in India - only then can I be me."
Author: Sami Ahmad Khan

45. "Women and minorities have excelled beautifully in comedy, but very few women are the lead in a drama."
Author: Sharon Gless

46. "I think that white women are more apt to read laterally. So I think there's some strong identification for women, and their political and social positions, and minorities. I think that the political power of, let's say, the average Indian man and a white woman are pretty equal."
Author: Sherman Alexie

47. "Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough'. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable -- this is Marcos."
Author: Subcomandante Marcos

48. "When a good idea is run through the filters and compressors of ordinary tunnel vision,it not only comes out reduced in scale and value but in it's new dogmatic configuration produces effects the opposite of those for which it originally intended. That is how the loving ideas of Jesus Christ became the sinister cliches of Christianity. That is why virtually every revolution in history has failed; the oppressed, as soon as they seize power, turn into the oppressors, resorting to totalitarian tactics to "protect the revolution." That is why minorities seeking the abolition of prejudice become intolerant , minorities seeking peace become militant, minorities seeking equality become self-righteous, and minorities seeking liberation become hostile (a tight asshole being the first symptom of self-repression)."
Author: Tom Robbins

49. "My honey child, them housing projects Cannot contain her multitudes A sunbeam, hard upon her Just a fly strugglin' through her braid loops Watch me prove to ‘em I'm more than nothin' But a ragamuffin with homesick eyes Yes, when it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me My love, she is a drummer Than industrial steel, her backbone tougher The eloping night and the honey moon that trails Just dirt ‘neath her finger nails I'll be down on them crossroads ‘Til daybreak winks a bright eye And if it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me She's heard all the right things And they did not persuade her She has no use for your words What she wants is your labor ‘Cause when gringos speak of minorities They tend to keep their voices low Ah, but when that gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me"
Author: Valentine Xavier

50. "Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies."
Author: Wendell Phillips

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