Sebastian > Sebastian's Quotes

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#1

“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

tags: america, history, immigration, politics, revolution, united-states, usa

1110 likes

#2

“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

tags: advice, americanism, english-as-a-second-language, immigration, politics, usa, wisdom

401 likes

#3

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

tags: americanism, immigration, patriotism, xenophobia

367 likes

#4

“A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”
― Ronald Reagan

273 likes

#5

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”
― Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

tags: danger, home, immigration, poem, poetry, refugees

275 likes

#6

“Lady and gentleman, when my parents left Korea with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the considerable wealth they had amassed in the shipping business, they had a dream. They had a dream that one day amid the snowy hilltops of western North Carolina, their son would lose his virginity to a cheerleader in the woman's bathroom of a Waffle House just off the interstate. My parents have sacrificed so much for this dream! And that is why we must journey on, despite all trials and tribulations! Not for me and least of all for the poor cheerleader in question, but for my parents and indeed for all immigrants who came to his great nation in what they themselves could never have: CHEERLEADER SEX.”
― John Green, Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

tags: bathroom, cheerleaders, immigration, sex, virginity

143 likes

#7

“People are talking about immigration, emigration and the rest of the fucking thing. It's all fucking crap. We're all human beings, we're all mammals, we're all rocks, plants, rivers. Fucking borders are just such a pain in the fucking arse.”
― Shane MacGowan

tags: drunk, immigration, music, politics

141 likes

#8

“Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people like him who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for for choice and certainty.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

tags: african-authors, immigration, nigeria, race

167 likes

#9

“The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

tags: american, born, born-here, choke, immigrant, immigration, palahniuk, truth

132 likes

#10

“Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.”
― Carlos Fuentes

tags: diversity, immigration, refugees

119 likes

#11

“Yo no soy mexicano. Yo no soy gringo. Yo no soy chicano. No soy gringo en USA y mexicano en Mexico. Soy chicano en todas partes. No tengo que asimilarme a nada. Tengo mi propia historia.”
― Carlos Fuentes

tags: border, carlos-fuentes, chicano, culture, frontera, immigration, la-frontera-de-cristal, mexican-american, mexican-american-history, mexicano, mexico-us, méxico, us-history

92 likes

#12

“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

tags: china, concepts, daughters, family, fear, heritage, hope, ideas, immigration, joy, language, luck, mothers, perception, tradition, women

127 likes

#13

“I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory. I watch the news and my mouth becomes a sink full of blood. The lines, the forms, the people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration officers, the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones, the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. But Alhamdulilah all of this is better than the scent of a woman completely on fire, or a truckload of men, who look like my father pulling out my teeth and nails, or fourteen men between my legs, or a gun, or a promise, or a lie, or his name, or his manhood in my mouth.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

tags: immigration, refugees

117 likes

#14

“I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you're young and asleep. Look at all these borders foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate...I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

tags: borders, immigration, refugees

95 likes

#15

“These days, it feels to me like you make a devil's pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started... but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers - who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

tags: immigrants, immigration, tolerance

79 likes

#16

“No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

tags: homeland, imaginary-things, immigrants, immigration

60 likes

#17

“AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

tags: amnesty, crime, humor, immigration, politics, punishment

49 likes

#18

“We asked for workers. We got people instead.”
― Max Frisch

tags: immigration

58 likes

#19

“There is no envy, jealousy, or hatred between the different colors of the rainbow. And no fear either. Because each one exists to make the others’ love more beautiful.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

tags: envy, hatred, jealousy, rainbow

69 likes

#20

“I take issue with many people's description of people being "Illegal" Immigrants. There aren't any illegal Human Beings as far as I'm concerned.”
― Dennis Kucinich

38 likes

#21

“Here’s to the security guards who maybe had a degree in another land. Here’s to the manicurist who had to leave her family to come here, painting the nails, scrubbing the feet of strangers. Here’s to the janitors who don’t understand English yet work hard despite it all. Here’s to the fast food workers who work hard to see their family smile. Here’s to the laundry man at the Marriott who told me with the sparkle in his eyes how he was an engineer in Peru. Here’s to the bus driver, the Turkish Sufi who almost danced when I quoted Rumi. Here’s to the harvesters who live in fear of being deported for coming here to open the road for their future generation. Here’s to the taxi drivers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and India who gossip amongst themselves. Here is to them waking up at 4am, calling home to hear the voices of their loved ones. Here is to their children, to the children who despite it all become artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, activists and rebels. Here’s to international money transfer. For never forgetting home. Here’s to their children who carry the heartbeats of their motherland and even in sleep, speak with pride about their fathers. Keep on.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

tags: diaspora, first-generation, immigration

91 likes

#22

“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out.”
― Tony Blair

tags: immigration

39 likes

#23

“The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

tags: america, immigration

46 likes

#24

“The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it--while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation--takes cover under dubious and sinister masks.”
― Norman Manea

tags: alien, alienation, assimilation, civics, emigration, estrangement, immigration, society

30 likes

#25

“Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Snow

tags: bildungsroman, identity, immigration, religion

38 likes

#26

“Nihil humanum a me alienum puto, said the Roman poet Terence: 'Nothing human is alien to me.' The slogan of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service could have been the reverse: To us, no aliens are human.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

tags: immigration, naturalisation, united-states

35 likes

#27

“Dat's what they say of this cauntry back home, Kath: 'America, the land of milk and honey.' Bot they never tell you the milk's gone sour and the honey's stolen.”
― Andre Dubus III, House of Sand and Fog

tags: america, american-dream, immigration

30 likes

#28

“I believe Western culture -- rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. -- is preferable to Arab culture: that's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation.”
― Mark Steyn

tags: culture, immigration, islam

28 likes

#29

“God created every man to be free. The ability to choose whether to live free or enslaved, right or wrong, happy or in fear is something called freewill. Every man was born with freewill. Some people use it, and some people use any excuse not to. Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unless you allow them. Nobody can tell you to do something wrong, unless you allow them. God never created you to be a slave, man did. God never created division or set up any borders between brothers, man did. God never told you hurt or kill another, man did. And in the end, when God asks you: "Who told you to kill one of my children?"

And you tell him, "My leader."

He will then ask you, "And are THEY your GOD?”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

tags: bad, birth, birthright, borders, born, children, conscience, creation, enslave, enslaved, evil, fear, free, freedom, freewill, god, good, happy, immigration, innocent, judgement, justice, kill, killing-humans, man, meeting-with-god, mercy, military, refugees, sad, slave, speaking-to-god, war, wrong

43 likes

#30

“Your life depends on a random stranger who could kill you, will probably disrespect you, and will most likely pay you much less than you deserve. But even those prospects are better than the ones you used to have. This is the life of los jornaleros – the day laborers.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

tags: equality, immigration, jobs, mexican

26 likes

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