"Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity, an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven."
-- Hubert Humphrey, January 15, 1967, speech in Chicago, IL
"The freedom of thought and the multiple cultural and political perspectives we offer in our public schools are what nurture a critical mind. And it is a critical mind that is the root of innovation, scientific inquiry and entrepreneurship."
-- Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, August 28, 2002
"People who believe it is either 'my way or the highway' invariably lead themselves and others down a dead-end street."
-- Rose Locander, Letter to the Editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 14, 2002
"Beliefs are immutable and signify an association with religious certainty . . . There is surely great value in holding and acting upon beliefs, but relying on them too much runs against centuries of liberal humanism, which teaches us to value those who ask questions over those who purport to have all the answers."
-- Daniel Wachtell, Letter to the Editor, New York Times, October 21, 2004
"The framers of the First Amendment 'did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us.' They protected the people against secret government. ... Democracies die behind closed doors. ... When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation."
-- Judge Damon J. Keith, U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, August 27, 2002
"America is not a country that needs to punish its dissenters to preserve its honor. America is not a country which needs to demand conformity of all its people, for its strength lies in all our diversities converging in one common belief, that of the importance of freedom as the essence of our country."
-- U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, 1967
"There is nothing for us but to make it a point of honor to privilege heresy to the last bearable degree on the simple ground that all evolution in thought must at first appear as heresy and misconduct."
-- George Bernard Shaw, Preface to "St. Joan"
"We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams."
-- Jimmy Carter, October 27, 1976
"Long ago, there was a noble word, LIBERAL, which derived from the word FREE. Now a strange thing happened to that word. A man named Hitler made it a term of abuse, a matter of suspicion, because those who were not with him were against him, and liberals had no use for Hitler. And then another man named McCarthy cast the same opprobrium on the word. Indeed, there was a time -- a short but dismaying time -- when many Americans began to distrust the word which derived from FREE. One thing we must all do. We must cherish and honor the word FREE or it will cease to apply to us."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt, Tomorrow is Now, 1963
"Our local newspaper came out with an editorial that said the best way to protest was not to show up. But I know that the Holocaust happened because good people stood by and did nothing"
-- Holocaust survivor Henry Golde of Appleton, Wis.,
protesting outside a retreat for the racist "Christian Identity" movements
