Maggie Gyllenhaal Quotes

There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.

I'm always excited when I make it on anyone's list - even if it's for affirmative action. My attitude is, 'Am I the token woman on this list? Because I'll take it.'

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others”, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through the those gates.

We've heard the excuses from those responsible for hiring that they don't want to take a chance on a new director. But the truth is that the industry hires new directors all the time; it's just that most of them are white males.

I'm not going to change the world overnight. It's one person at a time, and hopefully they're people in positions of power who can help people get in those roles and really, truly embrace colorblind casting.

To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist.

We seek not just freedom, but opportunity … not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

One of the things that I'm very proud to stand up and yell about is that we need to end gatekeeping in our society. We need to stop people from saying, 'You need to pass the test if you're going to come in here and do this.'

There are so many more women and men who deserve opportunities. People of color. Period.

We are building a country where a person's prospects are determined by their own initiative and hard work and not by the color of their skin, place of birth, gender, language, or income of their parents.

To be sure Plato did not favor 'affirmative action' to fill political and military offices in his own society; nor did he enroll women in his school.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

I don't know how one would define an affirmative-action hire. I ultimately do not know what role race played in my hiring.

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

If we are prepared to invest the necessary time and effort, affirmative action can contribute to Harvard's quality and not detract from it.

You must make sure that the majority of the people are not marginalized.

I don't have one role that I want to play. I guess... I want to be a producer. I want to be an activist. I want to be proactive in bringing about work for men, women, boys, girls, everybody who is good at what they do and deserve a shot at it.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It's time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers.

That's what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it's fair, because people would be the best if they weren't discriminated against.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

As an educator, I have always striven to see that the fruits of the American Dream are available to all.

... equal responsibilities are less popular than equal rights.

Where the effects of past discrimination persist, society has an obligation to take positive steps to overcome the legacy of injustice. Judiciously administered affirmative action programs in education and employment can be important expressions of the drive for solidarity and participation that is at the heart of true justice. Social harm calls for social relief.

Stronger than all the armies is the idea whose time has come. The time has come for equality in sharing in government and education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here.