Second Class Citizens Quotes - Page 2

• We all agree that marriage is a fundamental right. And in our country, and in our society, there are no second-class citizens.

  Bill T. Jones

  Country, Class, Citizens

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• While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed. An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.

  Bob Hawke

  Leadership, Class, Income

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• Too often girls accept that of course the boys will get better lighting and seating at their sports events, of course the football team will get more attention, privileges, and space in the yearbook. We need to teach girls to look around and notice when they're being treated like second-class citizens, and then to insist on equal treatment.

  Mariah Nelson

  Girl, Sports, Football

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• Nonfiction writers are second-class citizens, the Ellis Island of literature. We just can't quite get in. And yes, it pisses me off.

  William Styron

  Islands, Class, Citizens

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• My dad remembers being in school with my uncle, and the teacher would say outright to the class that the Japanese were second-class citizens and shouldn't be trusted.

  Mike Shinoda

  Teacher, Uncles, Dad

  "Linkin Park: 'We're famous, but we're not celebrities'" by Dave Simpson, www.theguardian.com. July 07, 2011.

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• We became a congresswoman, a stay-at-home mom, a filmmaker, and a journalist. And Lino and I taught our children that they could rise to even greater heights. They could become surgeons, CEOs, supreme court justices, secretary of state, and even president of the United States. We didn't teach our daughters that they were second-class citizens.

  Diana DeGette

  Mom, Daughter, Badass

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• Unfortunately, we don't have the option of marriage in our country. We could go to Britain or Spain or Argentina and do something symbolic, but that's not what I want. I want to have the rights of anybody else in my home country. I don't want to be a second-class citizen

  Dick Cheney

  Country, Home, Gay

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• If we were second class citizens we'd be driving old Cadillacs and living good. If we were first class we'd be driving a Rolls Royce.

  Muhammad Ali

  Class, Citizens, Cadillacs

  "Parkinson" with Michael Parkinson, www.mirror.co.uk. 1971.

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• Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.

  Gary L. Francione

  Kings, Gay, Animal

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• As for loving woman, I have never understood why some people had a fit. I still don't. It seems fine to me. If an individual is productive responsible, and energetic, why should her choice in a partner make such a fuss? The government is only too happy to take my tax money and yet they uphold legislation that keeps me a second class citizen. Surely, there should be a tax break for those of us who are robbed of full and equal participation and protection in the life of our nation.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Loving Life, Government, Class

  Rita Mae Brown (1987). “Poems”

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• Those who deny the existence of a supreme being have been turned into second-class citizens by a government that continuously sends messages that 'real Americans' believe in God.

  Michael Newdow

  Real, Believe, Government

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• Today courts wrongly interpret separation of church and state to mean that religion has no place in the public arena, or that morality derived from religion should not be permitted to shape our laws. Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression. Secularists want to empty the public square of religion and religious-based morality so they can monopolize the shared space of society with their own views. In the process they have made religious believers into second-class citizens.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Religious, Mean, Space

  Dinesh D'Souza (2008). “What's So Great about Christianity”, Tyndale House Pub

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• Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.

  Michelle Alexander

  Mean, Men, America

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2010.

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• We are the country that has attracted the biggest volume of foreign investment in southeastern Europe in the past few years. Romania doesn't need to beat itself, believing that it is a second-class citizen.

  Traian Basescu

  Country, Believe, Past

  "Romania demands equality - Europe - International Herald Tribune" by Nicholas Wood, www.nytimes.com. August 29, 2006.

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• Being an outsider means not being heard, not having a voice. It means being treated as a second-class citizen, being diminished in the eyes of others. We have all felt this way at one time or another, but some feel it more consistently. Unfortunately, our schools often do not embrace the talents of many of their occupants.

  Chris Crutcher

  Mean, Eye, School

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• When I was a kid and going to the movies I was overwhelmed by the way women were always second-class citizens in the film.

  Brit Marling

  Kids, Class, Citizens

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• I am very interested in the enlightenment of women. Very few teachers of advanced self discovery work with women, and if they do it's usually in a very second handed way. They treat women as second class citizens.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Buddhism, Class

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• Like the panic stricken populace of 'The War of the Worlds' and countless other 1950s invasion movies, the victims are there to provide the human ground over which monster and expert, threat and defender, disordering and ordering impulses can battle it out. Second-class citizens of the genre, they are narratively indispensable because physically entirely disposable. We are only really involved with them in the momentary tension of their capture or demise.

  Andrew Tudor

  War, Class, Battle

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• People don't do good work when they feel like losers and are second class citizens within their own company.

  Jonah Peretti

  Class, People, Citizens

  "BuzzFeed's strategy" by Chris Dixon, www.businessinsider.com. July 24, 2012.

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• I was a working class Jewish girl. In my girlhood, anti-Semitism was a daily fact of life in Detroit. I did not come from people who had many options in their lives or many choices open to them. I was a girl in a family in which women were, as in society at large, very much second-class citizens. I did not see why I should accept these forced limitations without a fight. Being free to make my own choices thus became very important to me at an early age.

  Marge Piercy

  Girl, Fighting, Class

  Interview with Charlotte Templin, margepiercy.com. May 2004.

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• We are not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of citizens. I am sick and tired of the American citizen being demeaned and treated as a second-class citizen while anybody who crosses the border is treated as the most virtuous human being on the face of the earth.

  Mark Levin

  Tired, Class, Sick

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• Our government treats the LGBT community like second-class citizens.

  Cindy McCain

  Government, Class, Lgbt Community

  "To-Do List: Fort Hood Hearing Resumed, Peace Talks Renewed, AOL Revamped" by Samantha Henig, www.newyorker.com. November 15, 2010.

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• I don't want to involve myself in the various arguments about why Israel was created . . . . . I want to deal with the situation at hand which is the ongoing killing on both sides. . . . . . . It's true that there's also much oppression of Palestinians in Arab countries, where Palestinians aren't allowed to vote or own property and are treated as second class citizens and pawns in the fight against Israel. But I'm not going to spend my time on this since there is isn't a whole lot I can do about it.

  Michael Moore

  Country, Fighting, Hands

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• Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Class, Choices, Citizens

  "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook". Book by Mignon McLaughlin, 1981.

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• This whole business of documentary being a second-class citizen is bullshit. A documentary can be as interesting, as dramatic, as sad, as funny, blah, blah, blah, as a fiction movie. Or it can be as awful as a fiction movie!

  Frederick Wiseman

  Class, Interesting, Bullshit

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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