Vladimir Putin Quotes

From the time of the North Briton of the unprincipled Wilkes, a notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.

I think we should appreciate ethnicity and diversity, and appreciate the uniqueness of all people, but I don't think we should be ethnocentric. These things are not ultimate.

When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

I honestly want to help. I don't believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning.

Today, we talk a lot about equality, but I think what most people mean by it is sameness - that everybody is the same - and they are afraid if they are not the same, they are not equal.

One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.

I think that every country presents its own particular challenges, different cultures, different histories, different religions, different people. And different ethnic make-ups in those countries present different challenges.

It's the UK: We have to get beyond that imperialist state. I think that kind of imperialist, hierarchical, elitist state has made it easier to basically shaft everybody in the country, which it's been doing for the last thirty years. It has also sort of made it more difficult for England to fulfill its destiny, which in my mind is creating a multi-ethnic, multicultural society that is truly at the head of that post-imperial commonwealth ideal. I think that that's what England should be and that that's the kind of nation we should be.

Becoming involved in sports and traveling the world and seeing how people of color were treated around the world, and America being such a great nation, probably the greatest nation in the world, I think that the thing that would destroy this nation more than anything is the inequality that we have amongst people of color.

What I think it's important to recognize in today's world is that all of our societies are multiethnic, multi-religious and multicultural. And that is a positive thing. That's a richness, and also strength. But we also have to recognize that, for those societies to be harmonious, there is a lot of the investment that needs to be made in social cohesion and inclusivity. But the important thing to recognize, and particularly Europe, most of the terrorist attacks are not done by people that came from the outside. They are homegrown.

I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.

Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community.

Almost 20 percent of the people living in Germany today have a foreign background. The problem is that Germany can't really offer foreigners an identity because the Germans hardly have a national identity themselves. That is certainly a result of Auschwitz.

For me, diversity whether you think of it as race or gender, it's not a trend, it's a human movement, it's a human feeling, it's a human desire.

In Montreal, where I taught in 1970, I met many people. The only ones who said to me they were Canadians, were Jews. All the rest were Scotts, Irish, English, French, Swedes.

If you read Herodotus, the first Greek historian 2,500 years ago, he was talking about that - about people mixing with other people. Sometimes it produces great societies. Sometimes it triggers war. But, we're not going to change that. I don't think so. We're living in nations that are state nations and countries.

Why I've never been that fond of politics and only got into it recently kicking and screaming, because I don't think politicians are going to reverse the trajectory of this country. I think it's going to depend on the American people understanding what is fair and what makes their lives better.

I was confident about America and the idea that in America people can become American without masking their ethnic identity.

I think that in a certain sense, we're concerned about the same issues. How do you accent the progressive, the prophetic, those things that are critical of all forms of injustice, all forms of bigotry, all forms of dehumanizing other people, and yet still allow for a certain kind of flow, linguistic flow, certain kinds of melodies and harmonies in the samplings that take place?

I do think that people have a desire to talk about issues they may have wanted to avoid before. I've never had so many random conversations with people where they're so ready to talk about race, gender, sexual identity, or things that are happening in politics.

I think that America is more diverse than ever before, and is continuing to become more diverse, and our content should and is reflecting that.

I think I appeal to people who are living in the margins because of their identity and who need to feel freedom somewhere.

Well, I think I’m a feminist, just by the virtue of the fact that I believe in equal rights for everyone.

To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American.

The pretention that some of us are better than others, I don't think is a very good thing. And who is contributing what to our progress in science is not so obvious and many who don't get that Nobel Prize are better than people... than some of us that do get the Nobel Prize. I think we should not be interested in prizes, we should be interested in learning about nature.