Linda Colley Quotes

I'm 50% Asian actually, so yes I was born in Paris but I feel more international than French so I can't talk about French women.

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.

I'm proud of my Korean heritage, but I want people to know I'm American. It's not important to be the Korean Taylor Swift.

People came to America and they did not abandon their own cultures, but they assumed new ones, a new one, an American culture rooted in liberty and freedom that they had never enjoyed in their lives prior. They didn't have to sacrifice who they were. They didn't have to change or give it up, but they were eager to become Americans.

But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.

Rather than be asked to abandon one's own heritage and to adapt to the mores of the new country, one was expected to possess a treasure of foreign skills and customs that would enrich the resources of American living.

I certainly know German colleagues in the U.S. who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I've never tried that.

We are now integrated into American society and I don't like the word fashionable, because fashionable means that it's going to pass. It's not like that anymore.

I grew up in a Mauritian bubble in France... I had the feeling of not belonging, but still living with French culture.

Traditionally, the ideology of the United States nationhood perpetuated the myth that immigrants would shed their particularistic ethnic identities and loyalties. Eventually these “strangers” would be assimilated into a homogeneous body politic that was based on the equality of individual rights.

It is often not even wise to try to make an American of the best of aliens.

The unifying characteristics that make us Americans are becoming more and more diluted now because new immigrants want to set up ethnic enclaves to retain their culture and language.

IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture…. We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society. Learn the language! …. If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.

We take foreigners to be incomplete Americans — convinced that we must help and hasten their evolution.

I grew up in the States, but I go back to Brazil quite often, and a big part of me is very Brazilian, so there's a constant struggle between the two cultures within me. They're very different approaches to life.

When you move around a lot, there are little bits of you from everywhere. I mean, my father's French, and I speak French, and there's a kind of struggle in me that says, 'I'd like to be French.' But I've never been fully part of that culture, that role.

Being South Asian in the U.K. is like being Latino in the U.S., I would guess. It's a bit more hood. You see things; things happen. I was bouncing between worlds. You're acting from a very early age, when you have to code-switch like that. I'm a hybrid, a mongrel. I think many people live that life.

Among immigrants today, it is increasingly fashionable to reject American exceptionalism in favor of multiculturalism. To pretend that this isn't happening isn't optimism; it's sheer fantasy.

I just grew up in the States, so I feel like I identify more with the American culture.

My parents were first-generation immigrants. My mum wore a sari but at school and as a teenager and in my 20s I wanted to fit in.

I was born in Canada, and then my dad played pro soccer in England and then also on an island off the coast of Portugal. So we lived there for, like, 10 years. And then we moved to Minnesota. So I feel like I've experienced a lot of different cultures, and I'm still figuring out who I am.

Multiculturalism, if its logic is fully played out, is the ideology of national suicide.

The question of identity has separated from the issue of 'assimilation', having lost much of its drama and become, so to speak, a secular problem.

What I can't understand is why come here and try and change our country into the place that you've come from? And all I ask of people is come here, respect our country, respect our laws, our culture, our way of life. Be Australian, join us, enjoy this beautiful country and everything that it has to offer.

I've travelled a lot, but I am essentially American. All my input has been American.