Richard Rodriguez Quotes

Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.

I'm turned on by diversity. I'm turned on by things that are different. I like different animals, I like different ways of travel, and I like different people.

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other causes for prejudice by noon.

Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as 'the bizarre'. Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else.

Foreigners are not like the people I am used to here.

We need diversity in our population to make it work.

It is very curious that the United States and Canada both assume that diversity means only race and ethnicity. They never assume it might mean more Nazis, or more Southern Baptists. That's diversity too, you know.

I just don't believe that there's any way that you're ever gonna get one peace, because everybody has different ways of seeing life.

All conflict is about difference; whether the difference is race religion, or nationality.

There is a lot of difference between the man who is not able and his brother who is notable.

Jews are no longer pressed and obliged to fight, hide or deny their Jewishness. What for? No one actually requires today to abandon the idiosyncrasy of some other culture or ethnic tradition. The great achievement of this last period is that we have been slowly, sometimes reluctantly, yet steadily, learning the art of living with differences.

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.

Thats what I crave that diversity.

In our American cities, we need all kinds of diversity.

The less the difference, the greater the quarrel over it.

Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? … The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

The beauty of when you watch good television or films is that, yes, you may have a multi-cultural cast but those roles could be anybody - they could be white, they could be black. To show the world that we have more in common than we have different with each other is to me the ultimate goal of all of that. It does help unite in people's mind the thought that people are the same. Yes, there's going to be cultural differences, but for the most part, we are all in the same gang as human beings.

There's a great variety of people in Washington, but I think because of the great concentration of people in New York, that variety is more visible. You walk the streets and there are people of every color, shape and size, ethnic background, religion, it doesn't matter. It's always present.

Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.

New York is so diverse. When you're on the street or in the subway, you're experiencing more of the diversity of New York.

The most universal quality is diversity.

People in the U.S. always got to be spoon-fed. If it's something to difficult to understand, they don't give it a chance. They want something real simple that they can sing along with and play in the clubs and that's about it. In the UK, their whole mind set is completely different.

…he is unlike the other customers. They sense it too, and look at him with hard eyes, eyes like little metal studs pinned into the white faces of young men [...] In the hush his entrance creates, the excessive courtesy the weary woman behind the counter shows him amplifies his strangeness. He orders coffee quietly and studies the rim of the cup to steady the sliding in his stomach. He had thought, he had read, that from shore to shore all America was the same. He wonders, Is it just these people I’m outside or is it all America?

We may differ widely in environments, education, learning, knowledge, or lack of it, and in our personalities, our likes and dislikes. But if we set ourselves the task, we'll find a meeting place somehow and somewhere.

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.