2021, February 2021, Remarks by President Biden to Department of Defense Personnel, February 10, 2021
Philip Kan Gotanda (1951) American film director and playwright
On how Asians might fit into the Black-White dichotomy in the United States in “Philip Kan Gotanda by David Henry Hwang” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/philip-kan-gotanda-1/ in BOMB Magazine (1997 Jan 1)
Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiLR4sCgvnc
Context: But now, let’s give each other a chance.
It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric.
To lower the temperature.
To see each other again.
To listen to each other again.
To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy.
We are not enemies. We are Americans.
“When all Americans are treated as equal we are all more free.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)
Context: This ruling is a victory for Jim Obergefell and the other plaintiffs in the case. It's a victory for gay and lesbian couples who have fought so long for their basic civil rights. It’s a victory for their children, whose families will now be recognized as equal to any other. It’s a victory for the allies and friends and supporters who spent years, even decades, working and praying for change to come. And this ruling is a victory for America. This decision affirms what millions of Americans already believe in their hearts: When all Americans are treated as equal we are all more free.
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
“The Intellectual in America”, p. 5
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
Nicholas D. Kristof (1959) journalist, author, columnist
" America's History of Fear http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05kristof.html", New York Times, 4 September 2010
Samir Khader Iraqi journalist
http://www.indypressny.org/article.php3?ArticleID=1516
Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii.
Context: Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.
“The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.”
Yahia Lababidi (1973)
Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)
“When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself”
Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker
Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States
