George Mikes Quotes

I've been to so many parties in England and in America that's exactly like that, where you're kind of, like, seen as Other. When you're just living your life, and you have to adopt the Other in order to understand and navigate the society.

As long as being a stranger and surrounded by strangers was seen as a temporary irritant, a smallest departure from the binding rules of conduct by a member of a minority, was taken for a major crime justifying deportation.

The law of dislike for the unlike will always prevail. And whereas the unlike is normally situated at a safe distance, the Jews bring the unlike into the heart of every milieu, and must there defend a frontier line as large as the world.

Even if I did speak Irish, I’d always be considered an outsider here, wouldn’t I? I may learn the password but the language of the tribe will always elude me, won’t it? The private core will always be ...hermetic, won’t it?

I don't believe in nationalism. I think it's a bunch of slogans. It's a bunch of poor attempts at creating pride. My problem with nationalism is that it becomes exclusionary. We start to exclude people.

When I was at school, you had to choose; there was a lot of pressure to assimilate. You were an Aussie, or you were one of 'the wogs' - which was everybody else. But I didn't want to be in either group, so I felt like an odd one out.

The recent riots in France demonstrate the problem European countries face where second and third generation immigrants still do not consider themselves French, German, or English.

When I was young I was one of the second generation of black people in Holland. My father was the first. My mother was white, and living with a black man at that time and having a how-you-say half-caste boy is not easy.

It's a mistake to assume that Islamists always come from the slums. Indeed, many come from affluent families but for some reason just couldn't manage to integrate into Western society, even though they had good opportunities for advancement.

It's very difficult for felons to live in society.

In America, black urban teenagers have long been lacking in inclusion. In France, there is a comparable lack of inclusion among North Africans. In much of Europe, there has been little attempt to include the Roma.

In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.

In China, I realized that if you visit often enough and learn the language, you will be assimilated, but you'll still be kept at arm's length; you'll always be looked on as a foreigner.

Efforts to concentrate immigrants in social groups and to retard their Americanization should be steadily frowned down.

Whoever imitates a people is one of them.

These men who come out of prison have offended against society, they cannot expect that society will immediately forget their offense. On the other hand, for its own protection, society would do well to make it possible at least for such men and women as really wish to go straight, to go straight. We must face the fact that once a person has found it possible to get a living in crooked ways, they have a knowledge which makes it easier to return to those ways than if they had never known them. Therefore it is harder to keep in the straight and narrow path of virtue!

Let those who have been robbers, now become knights.

Countries like France, Italy and the Netherlands may pay lip service to inclusion, but the ethos in those places is that immigrants can never really become French, Italian or Dutch, no matter what their passports say. The emphasis is on tolerance and respect, but there’s no real expectation that foreign nationals fit in.

We focus so much on how immigrants can change America that we forget that America has always changed immigrants even more.

In Europe, you have very different situation than you do in the United States. In Europe, it's very segregated. And you have the diasporas in Belgium that I saw. And they're being radicalized because they're not assimilated with the culture. I don't think we have that same situation in the United States.

Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal if you've been labeled a felon.

Being subjected to Islamophobic abuse makes integration less likely and amplifies the views of the extremists rather than the mainstream. It's divisive and dangerous and puts British lives at risk.

I've always been 'other' in all the spaces that I've been in. Even when I first moved to America, just the idea that I was a dark-skinned black girl from England with an accent. It's one thing to be a black girl, but it's another to be a dark black girl. I was chastised for that. I was chastised for the way I spoke.

A full body veil is hindering integration.

We have a huge immigration population in Sweden, but when I was younger, I grew up in a small town and, at one point, I was the only foreigner in my class. I really felt different, and I thought I looked different. Sometimes it was a good thing, sometimes I felt insecure.