Quotes
From those who are “famous,” and those who are not…not yet!
“I want future generations to know that we are a people who see our differences
as a great gift, that we are a people who value the dignity and worth
of every citizen – man and woman, young and old, black and white,
Latino and Asian, immigrant and Native American, gay and straight,
Americans with mental illness or physical disability.”
President Barack Obama
(January 20, 2015)
“If you’re always trying to be “Normal” you will never know how amazing you can be.”
Maya Angelou
“We’re all supposed to be different. I want so badly to encourage everybody
to say, “who am I, and how do I want to live my life?” “It would be lovely
to celebrate our individuality and celebrate our uniqueness.”
Ellen DeGeneres
(Ellen hopes for a less “conformist” society and the courage to be oneself)
“The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead
to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions
lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and
around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans
only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.”
Ellen DeGeneres
“Diversity: The art of thinking independently together.”
Malcolm Forbes
“We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and
recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.”
Maya Angelou
“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone, it’s not. The
worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone.”
Robin Williams
“Nothing seems crazy when you’re used to it.”
Sarah Silverman
“When you always try to conform to the norm, you lose your uniqueness,
which can be the foundation for your greatness.”
Dale Archer
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out
against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from
a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current
which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice.”
Robert F. Kennedy
“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not
able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective
relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”
Daniel Goleman
“The opposite of courage is not cowardice but conformity.”
Jim Hightower
“I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis in our time.
It concerns the relationship of the individual to society… [His] position in society
is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated,
while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate.
All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this
process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel
insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment
of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through
devoting himself to society. The economic anarchy of capitalist society
as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evil.”
Albert Einstein (1949)
“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life
is the source from which self-respect springs.”
Joan Didion
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
Aristotle
“It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.”
Ellen DeGeneres
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better”
Maya Angelou
“The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right
to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Language not only expresses ideas and concepts but actually shapes thought.”
Robert B. Moore
(Racism in the English Language)
“Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together
when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.”
Henry Ford
“Be careful how you speak to your children. One day it will become their inner voice.”
Peggy O’Mara
“False-imagination teaches that such things as light and shade, long and short,
black and white are different and are to be discriminated; but they are not independent
of each other; they are only different aspects of the same thing, they are terms of
relation and not of reality. Conditions of existence are not of a mutually
exclusive character; in essence things are not two but one.”
The Lankavatara Sutra
” It ain’t about the ass, it’s about the brain”
(“To those struggling with anxiety, OCD, depression: I know it’s
mad annoying when people tell you to exercise, and it took me
about 16 medicated years to listen. I’m glad I did.”)
Lena Dunham
“The trouble with this world is not that people know too little,
but that they know too much that isn’t true”
Mark Twain
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
Carl Jung
Be Counted! Illuminate Mental Diversity at Work.
There is safety (AND strength) in numbers. “All for one, and one for all.”
Suggestions, feedback, comments, and questions welcomed at MindingDiversity@aol.com
© October 2015
Minding Diversity 