Affirmative Quotes - Page 5

• I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.

  Dick Gephardt

  Strong, Believe, Fighting

  "Gephardt Admits Mistake on Race Issues in '70s", www.foxnews.com. January 11, 2004.

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• If you're going to compare a middle-income black kid with a middle- income white kid, and, say, you control for family background, family education, and family income, and if this middle-income black kid doesn't score as well as the white kid on the test, then I say, look, you haven't taken into consideration the cumulative effect of living in a segregated neighborhood and going to a de facto segregated school. You're denying a position at Harvard or some other place to a kid that really could make it. That's why I support affirmative action that's based on both class and race.

  William Julius Wilson

  Taken, Kids, School

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• The affirmative of affirmatives... is love.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Love

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2522, Delphi Classics

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• Over the years, black leaders have been slow to recognize the need for a very, very progressive agenda. Anytime someone has talked about putting America back to work, blacks should have said yes, but they didn't. They were so preoccupied with affirmative action that they didn't provide the kind of leadership that would help some of the other progressive folks. Only now are black leaders beginning to realize the impact of economic issues.

  William Julius Wilson

  Leader, Black, Helping

  Interview With Gerald Early, www.motherjones.com. September/October 1996.

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• I have supported affirmative action, I do support affirmative action and I will support affirmative action.

  Joe Lieberman

  Support, Action, Affirmative Action

  "Gore jets to Los Angeles to join rallying Democrats" by Ian Christopher McCaleb, www.cnn.com.

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• Today's announcement projects a picture of profound weakness in U.S. diplomacy. It should not have been a heavy lift for our diplomats in New York and in foreign capitals to recruit the necessary 96 affirmative votes to seat the United States in the new council.

  Tom Lantos

  New York, Profound, Weakness

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• I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it.

  Quentin Bryce

  Support, Special, Needs

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• I have no interest in artists who are purely affirmative, who've made a commercialized fetish of the culture's stupidity.

  Ben Lerner

  Artist, Stupidity, Culture

  "Despair strikes me as eminently reasonable and boring". Interview with Tao Lin, believermag.com. September 2014.

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• We are posing two very clear questions. The first is: Did the Holocaust actually take place? You answer this question in the affirmative. So, the second question is: Whose fault was it? The answer to that has to be found in Europe and not in Palestine. It is perfectly clear: If the Holocaust took place in Europe, one also has to find the answer to it in Europe.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Europe, Two, Holocaust

  "We Are Determined". SPIEGEL Interview, www.spiegel.de. May 30, 2006.

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• One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can`t be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can`t be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong.

  Christopher Caldwell

  Strong, Moving, World

  Christopher Caldwell (2009). “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West”, p.313, Penguin UK

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• I think that we need more economic-based solutions to the problems afflicting the Black community, and I think that that's a way to redefine affirmative action. I grew up with poor white people in West Virginia, and I know there's a culture of poverty. I know that I've seen white people perform exactly the same pathological forms of behavior as Black people do when they're systematically deprived, whether it's getting pregnant, doing drugs, dropping out of school, whatever we're talking about. I think that we should have affirmative action for poor white people too.

  Henry Louis Gates

  School, Thinking, Virginia

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. October 21, 2013.

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• I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Responsibility, Thinking, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I ended Affirmative Action by executive order and replaced it with a leadership model that created more opportunities for African-American and Hispanic students.

  Jeb Bush

  Opportunity, Order, African American

  "RNC chair blasts CNBC's 'crap sandwich' debate; Bush, Kasich call out GOP rivals". "Hannity" with Sean Hannity, www.foxnews.com. October 29, 2015.

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• You take a poor black child. Give him a good education, tell him he's somebody, that God didn't create junk when he created him, and that black child will create his own affirmative action.

  J. C. Watts

  Children, Giving, Black

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• During the years I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, the most resistant audiences I ever faced in the process of doing corporate workshops on equality in the workplace were not male executives - they were the wives of male executives. As long as her income came from her husband, she was not feeling generous when affirmative action let another woman have a head start vying for her husband's (her) income.

  Warren Farrell

  New York, Husband, Years

  "The Myth of Male Power". Book by Warren Farrell, 1993.

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• Fundamentally, if the league is going to have a no-tolerance policy for domestic abuse, if we're going to be a global organization that's going to have this as a perspective, we've got to back it up. We can't be backed into it with a video with more coming out. We have to make an affirmative stand on it.

  Steve Young

  Organization, League, Perspective

  "Steve Young Calls Out The NFL For Only Banning Ray Rice Because The Elevator Video Came Out" by Tony Manfred, www.businessinsider.com. September 08, 2014.

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• Blake expressed some doubt as to whether God had made the tiger. But the tiger is in many ways an admirable animal. We have now to ask whether God made the tapeworm. And it is questionable whether an affirmative answer fits in either with what we know about the process of evolution or what many of us believe about the moral perfection of God.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Believe, Animal, Perfection

  "The Causes of Evolution". Book by John B. S. Haldane, 1932.

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• Didn't we settle contraception & affirmative action? If the GOP keep going backwards they'll soon be debating slavery.

  Andy Borowitz

  Slavery, Action, Settling

  FaceBook post by Andy Borowitz from Feb 26, 2012

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• Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief - or even of disbelief - in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Men, Expression, Law

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• The government can back up its tastes and beliefs with the police power. That is why it cannot be permitted tastes and beliefs. Most emphatically, it cannot be permitted to define one group as being privileged over another group of people. It was wrong in the days of Jim Crow; it is wrong in the days of affirmative action.

  Charles A. Murray

  Government, People, Police

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• I'm pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-environment and pro-labor. I was either going to be the loneliest Republican in America or I was going to be a happy Democrat.

  Wesley Clark

  America, Choices, Action

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• Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.

  Cornel West

  Thinking, Action, Crucial

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I don't know how one would define an affirmative-action hire. I ultimately do not know what role race played in my hiring.

  Jayson Blair

  Race, Roles, Action

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• One thing has not changed: to doubt the worth of minority students' achievement when they succeed is really only to present another face of the prejudice that would deny them a chance to even try. It is the same prejudice that insists all those destined for success must be cast from the same mold as those who have succeeded before them, a view that experience has already proven a fallacy.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Views, Achievement, Doubt

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• Every novel presents a slice of life. A noir policier for example presents one slice, one that perhaps addresses social dysfunction or some sort of pathology, while mine present a slice that is more upbeat and affirmative.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Dysfunction, Example, Noir

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