Woodrow Wilson Quotes

Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as One America.

The melting-pot idea is futile ... The brew in a melting pot is always boiling over.

I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted.

Our nation has been called a melting pot. I think of it more as a mosaic, one to which many groups make their own distinct contributions.

Assimilation is what has made America great.

… mongrel nation

The fallacies of the Melting Pot theory have also become obvious. Years before the war [WWI] it had become increasingly apparent that the Melting Pot was no longer successfully performing its function; that the American population was losing its homogeneous character; that various nationalities of recent immigrants were forming more and more compact racial "blocs," each bloc tenaciously maintaining its own racial character, customs, and traditions.

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

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

The difference between a nation and a nationality is clear, but it is not always observed. Likeness between members is the essence of nationality, but the members of a nation may be very different. A nation may be composed of many nationalities, as some of the most successful nations are.

Here's an idea: How about just 'Americans?' That has a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Placing undue emphasis on our 'separateness' is a step backward. Bring back the melting pot.

The diversity of America is a strength of the country, and I don't think that we use that. We don't talk about our strengths. I mean, having so many diverse people in this country from all aspects of all over the world, and we don't use that. I think we should talk about who we are - that melting pot that we've become.

The historical problem of the United States is to admit that it is a multiracial and multi-ethnic nation.

Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting.

The melting pot was always a tension between difference and sameness.

We [French Canadians] may not assimilate, we may not blend, but for all that we are still the component parts of the same country.

This is a country where Jews and Arabs speak without fear. Where people come from different cultures the world over. Where everyone becomes Brazilian rapidly.

America is transplanted Europe, but a Europe that has not been disintegrated and scattered in the transplanting as in some Dispersion. Its colonies live here inextricably mingled, yet not homogeneous. They merge but they do not fuse.

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 very proud being Puerto Rican. I'm American. That is what America is made of - people from different lands.

I feel like I've mixed my Middle Eastern and Western loves together.

Extreme multiculturalism... is not the way to build this country.

The emergence of a strong Muslim identity in Britain is, in part, a result of multicultural policies implemented since the 1980s, which have emphasized difference at the expense of shared national identity.

I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American.

We no longer want to be a melting pot, because we don't understand what is already melted.