Wisdom Quotations

Diversity

Anais Nin:
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Anne Frank:
We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

Donald Williams:
For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.

Ecclesiastes:
For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.

Elbert Hubbard:
Religions are many and diverse, but reason and goodness are one.

Eugene McCarthy:
As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

Franklin Thomas:
One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.

Harry Emerson Fosdick:
The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. The Living of These Days, 1956

James Baldwin:
It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Jerome Nathanson:
The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

Jimmy Carter:
We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

John F. Kennedy:
If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

John F. Kennedy:
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

Margaret Mead:
If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

Marian Wright Edelman:
When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, "Let all children come unto me."

Mark Twain:
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Mohandas Gandhi:
I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be
stiffled. I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house
as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:
It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others' religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.

Pearl S. Buck:
We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity.

Rene Dubos:
Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

Robert A. Heinlein:
One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.

Robert F. Kennedy:
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.