Yquotes.com

 

Abigail, do you favor the United States Army abolishing the affirmative action program that produced Colin Powell? Yes or no? Yes or no?
--
In response to a statement by Abigail Thernstrom, Remarks in a Townhall Meeting on Race at the E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall at the University of Akron, Akron, Ohio (December 3, 1997). "http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=53654 Remarks in a Townhall Meeting on Race in Akron]," December 3, 1997.

 

Bill Clinton

» Bill Clinton - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

There is one compromise and one only, and that is the United Nations. If the United States and Britain go to the United Nations and the United Nations says we have concrete evidence of the existence of these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we feel that we must do something about it, we would all support it. ... There is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like. And of course we must consider the men and the women around the president. Gen. Colin Powell commanded the United States army in peacetime and in wartime during the Gulf war. He knows the disastrous effect of international tension and war, when innocent people are going to die, young men are going to die. He knows and he showed this after September 11 last year. He went around briefing the allies of the United States of America and asking for their support for the war in Afghanistan. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, they are people who are unfortunately misleading the president. Because my impression of the president is that this is a man with whom you can do business. But it is the men who around him who are dinosaurs, who do not want him to belong to the modern age.

 

Nelson Mandela

 

Affirmative action has to be combined with a broader program of social reform that would emphasize social rights: the right to employment, the right to education, the right to good health. Over the years, black leaders have been slow to recognize the need for a very, very progressive agenda. Anytime someone has talked about putting America back to work, blacks should have said yes, but they didn't. They were so preoccupied with affirmative action that they didn't provide the kind of leadership that would help some of the other progressive folks. Only now are black leaders beginning to realize the impact of economic issues.

 

William Julius Wilson

 

In those days, affirmative action was for whites only. I might still be working for the grocery store in the small Texas town where I grew up were it not for affirmative action for Southern white boys.

 

Bill Moyers

 

[Hollywood] is a very male business, and it has in vast portions of it — the whole action movie part of it might as well be the United States Army in 1943 in that the ethics of it are, you know, boot camp and action movies and guns and explosions and all the rest of it, and that – so that means that about 50% of the business is not only pretty much closed off to women, but women don’t even wanna be in it!

 

Nora Ephron

 

In the Bronx, we had three synagogues on one block at 161st Street. My father was Orthodox and we went to the Sephardi one. Further along was the Conservative, the biggest. In between was the Ashkenazi shul. And guess who was their shabbos goy? Colin Powell!

 

Murray Perahia