#erica

Your life can be different, Young Ju. Study and be strong. In America, women have choices. ↗

— An Na

#assimilation #education #gender-equality #korean #education

Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#dispossession #environment #equality #extermination #morality

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our Democracy; Tonight is your answer. ↗

— Barack Obama

#dreams #politics #dreams

I'm here to tell niggas it ain't all swell. There's Heaven then there's Hell niggas One day your cruisin' in your seven, Next day your sweatin', forgettin' your lies, Alibis ain't matchin' up, bullshit catchin' up Hit with the RICO, they repoed your vehicle Everything was all good just a week ago 'Bout to start bitchin' ain't you? Ready to start snitchin' ain't you? I forgive you. Weak ass, hustlin' just ain't you Aside from the fast cars Honeys that shake they ass in bars You know you wouldn't be involved With the Underworld dealers, carriers of mac-millers East coast bodiers, West coast cap-peelers Little monkey niggas turned gorillas. ↗

— Jay-Z

#blackness #crime #crime-and-punishment #freakonomics #ghetto

Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time. ↗

— Rebecca Solnit

#landscape #nature #page- #dreams

America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has ever come up with so far. Not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are always our own most effective voice of descent....We must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political or moral issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism. If you don't like what I say or don't agree with where I stand on certain issues, then good. I'm glad we're in America, and don't have to oppress each other over it. We're not just a nation, we're not an ethnicity. We are a dream of justice that people have had for a thousand years. ↗

— Craig Ferguson

#inspirational #patriotism #dreams

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.-Leonard Cohen ↗

— Bailey Bristol

#family-found #historical-romance #love-story #romance #family

Americans. They came right out with things. Hitchens family lore related the tale of how once, when I was but a toddler, my parents were passing with me through an airport and ran into some Yanks. 'Real cute kid,' said these big and brash people without troubling to make a formal introduction. They insisted on photographing me and, before breaking off to resume their American lives, pressed into my dimpled fist a signed dollar bill in token of my cuteness. This story was often told (I expect that Yvonne and the Commander had been to an airport together perhaps three times in their lives) and always with a note of condescension. That was Americans for you: wanting to be friendly all right, but so loud, and inclined to flash the cash. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#family

Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. ↗

— Thomas Wolfe

#certain #fixed #haunting #here #movement

We are now in the Me Decade - seeing the upward roll of the third great religious wave in American history. ↗

— Tom Wolfe

#american history #decade #great #history #me