“If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me… The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not 'become Indian'. He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense 'become American'.”

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I …" by Dinesh D'Souza?
Dinesh D'Souza photo
Dinesh D'Souza 61
Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author 1961

Related quotes

Carmine Crocco photo

“Undoubtedly I have done harm to the society, but I have done it for defending my life, I would set fire to the whole world for it.”

Carmine Crocco (1830–1905) Italian revolutionary

Senza dubbio, ho fatto del male alla società, ma io facevo per difendere la mia vita; per essa avrei dato fuoco a tutto il mondo.
As quoted in Voci dall'ergastolo

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“I would have devoted my whole efforts to securing the waterway to India – by the acquisition of Egypt or of Crete, and would in no way have discouraged the obliteration of Turkey.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Letter to Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (15 June 1877), from G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume II, pp. 145-146

Dmitri Shostakovich photo
Arno Allan Penzias photo

“The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.”

Arno Allan Penzias (1933) American physicist

New York Times, March 12, 1978, as cited in Bergman 1994, 183.

J.M.W. Turner photo

“I never in my whole life could make a drawing like that; I would at any time have given one of my little fingers to have made such a one”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

one of Girtin's yellow drawings
remark of Turner to Chambers Hall, (before 1855); as cited in The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A. , Walter Thornbury - A new Edition, Revised https://ia601807.us.archive.org/24/items/gri_33125004491185/gri_33125004491185.pdf; London Chatto & Windus, 1897, p. 61
undated quotes

Abraham Pais photo

“If those papers had been in my pocket I would have never lived to be seventy. I have led a strange life, a set of complete coincidences.”

Abraham Pais (1918–2000) American Physicist

On the fate of his friend Lion Nordheim, who was executed ten days before the end of the war, and his own release at around the same time, p. 52
To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (2000)
Context: On the day we were caught, Lion and I had been talking about writing a memorandum on the fate of the Jewish war children living in hiding or among Dutch families … we were the representatives of the Zionist youth organization. … Lion who had been taking notes of the discussion, put these papers in his jacket pocket when he took a break from lunch. When the Germans caught us they discovered his notes. If those papers had been in my pocket I would have never lived to be seventy. I have led a strange life, a set of complete coincidences.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday

Ayrton Senna photo

Related topics