S.

“What all of this suggests is that we need a more complex understanding
of identities. If we identify on the basis of race, class, sexuality, or
gender alone we cannot make sense of the ways these identifications
combine and change over time. The used-to-be-working class now
professional woman, the woman of mixed racial parentage who appears
white, the divorced mother who is now a lesbian, the former lesbian who
is now straight, or the former lesbian who is now a man. Identities are
always in motion; they are mobile (Ferguson, 1993). This is particularly
the case for those who have been placed in identity categories that do not
quite seem to fit; it is also true of many more of us, in varied ways. Just
ask our current President, whose own origin story, of which he has spoken
and written eloquently, is exceedingly complex. We need, I believe, a
conception of identities that embraces this complexity, that takes into
account temporality and also specificity.”
― Arlene Stein

“We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

{Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson