Jean Vanier Quotes

Integrating in the society is a fundamental scriptural Christian trait. This integration is a must - moderate constructive integration. All of us, as Egyptians, have to participate.

Football is a personal interest which has been turned into a philanthropic initiative directed at encouraging social cohesion during the difficult process of African modernisation.

I have worked hard to build relationships between Jewish people and black people.

The audiences for some of many of our greatest cultural events—I’m thinking particularly of the Proms [traditional patriotic promenade concerts]—is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this. I know this is not about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect they will do that wherever they can.

We have to insist that those who come to us show a willingness to integrate that corresponds to our readiness to integrate them.

I certainly think so, and I argue so, and I give talks on that. Are there risks by putting people together? Absolutely. Is there value in the black church? Absolutely. Is there value in having immigrant churches? Absolutely. But if we don't have congregations gathering with people of different races, what we're doing is we are redefining racial division, a racial inequality.

So one of the profound things we found when studying these congregations, the mixed ones, is just how much overlap and interracial ties that develop not only with the people in the congregation, but they start meeting each other's families, and their friends, and they go to each other's neighborhoods if they live in different neighborhoods, and at work they meet people they wouldn't otherwise met, and so it creates a whole new definition of what the group is.

There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.

You cannot deal with a city if it's not socially integrated.

My interest is to establish an agenda of engagement with Mexicans that will respond to Mexicans' most urgent needs.

I have strong interests in supporting sport, primarily football, and also in developing cultural relationships within national communities and their diasporas, with special reference to Ethiopia.

Projects meant living with blacks and Puerto Ricans, but that's what we wanted. Living in the projects, we've met so many wonderful, wonderful people.

The natural evolution of a well-educated populus is integration. And this is not political; it's not theoretical; it's not even partisan.

The Jewish world is becoming fully integrated with the ideas of the normal world. They feed off each other.

Cultivate the company and friendship of people outside your community, and come to know them as well as your own. The understanding and appreciation that develop from such social contacts is the best way of removing inter-state differences, and makes life richer and more interesting.

I've spent my entire adult life encouraging minority communities to get involved in mainstream society, civic society.

Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a 'life lie.'

We need a national service that throws us all together, the urban with the rural, the Fox News types with the MSNBC crowd. That way, Americans can get to know Americans and learn - as previous generations did - that we are all Americans.

The challenge is to open a new page in our political life and to take action so that everyone is able to find his or her place in France and in Europe.

It is almost impossible to divorce sport from politics, but sport is such a positive factor in today's society - there is nothing else which will bring so many people together in that atmosphere.

Undoubtedly, church fish fries and picnics help build social cohesion. It was at my dad's medium-size evangelical church - my first real exposure to a sustained religious community - that I first saw people of different races and classes worshiping together.

I've always liked that idea of a diverse group of audience members sitting together, rubbing up against each other and taking on the life of a culture that doesn't belong to either one of them.

I try to fix things between the Asian community and the English community. There are always going to be racial things there, not getting on with each other and stuff. I have tried to break that barrier.

The mission of the Ruby Bridges Foundation is to create educational opportunities like science camp that allow children from different racial, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds to build lasting relationships.