Language Discrimination Quotes

There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican-Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English.

Women have had the power of naming stolen from us.

You know, even growing up going to school, I had teachers that were against bilingual teaching. I never understood that. My parents always had me speak Spanish first knowing I was going to speak English in school.

I did hold the language laws of Quebec up to ridicule because they are officious and ridiculous.

The world still consists of two clearly divided groups: the English and the foreigners. One group consists of less than 50 million people; the other of 3,950 million. The latter group does not really count.

Insist on one language. English for all Americans.

It was probably only the Tsarist Government's chronic dislike of popular education that saved the Rumanian peasantry from compulsory Russification.

Should people working in our country speak English? Yes, they should.

Bilingualism is not an imposition on the citizens - it is an imposition on the state.

When California passes a law saying that English is the official language, it can only mean one thing: That English is no longer the official language.

To become an American citizen, we require people to read, write and speak in English. That is to help them to assimilate in our melting pot, truly to become Americans. We mock that when the cherished right to vote does not involve English any more.

Anyone who doesn't speak English isn't worth speaking to

No common education has served to remove and soften the differences of origin and language.

Bilingualism used to have an undeservedly bad reputation; then it got an undeservedly exalted one.

I don't like doing things without understanding the meaning. Once I walked out of a film event as I could not stand the insult they meted out to a Sanskrit verse.

I chose English-speaking and English-thinking people to take decisions for Hindi programmes. It was a mistake.

So what's really behind the 'English Only' Movement? Fear. Fear of being taken over and one day they will have to learn something different. Heaven forbid they would have to learn something new.

Blame the guy who doesn't speak Engish.

When an English man speaks well, for example now, and this is another way of putting us down, they say he's "eloquent" you see. "Oh, eloquent chap they are!" An Irish person speak well, they say, "Ah, you have the gift of the gab." "Ah, you kissed the blarney stone." You see, all of this putting us down.

Speaking Spanish isn't a benefit in Hollywood.

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'

It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual, but it is a curse for a society to be bilingual… A society must be able to talk amongst itself.

In the South we experienced, you know, some black kids who gave us a hard time because - cause 'you talk white.' We didn't talk white. We talked fairly proper. Plus, we had a Midwestern accent, so we didn't have a Southern accent, either. So it wasn't really talking white; it was talking different.

I've had tweets questioning whether I really did go to university because surely I would have lost my accent if I did; a letter suggesting, very politely, that I get correction therapy; and an email saying I should get back to my council estate and leave the serious work to the clever folk.

When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak.