Multiculturalism Quotes

“We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity; I can't even find the model by which to live outside myself. I can only find it within.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“[M]y discovering my own identity doesn't mean that I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“We need a new, deeper appreciation of the ethnic histories of the American people, not a reduction of American history to ethnic histories.”
― Steven C. Rockefeller, Multiculturalism

“...liberalism can't and shouldn't claim complete cultural neutrality. Liberalism is also a fighting creed.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“...dominant groups tend to entrench their hegemony by inculcating an image of inferiority in the subjugated.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

“...one could argue that it is reasonable to suppose that cultures that have provided the horizon of meaning for large numbers of human beings, of diverse characters and temperaments, over a long period of time - that have, in other words, articulated their sense of the good, the holy, the admirable - are almost certain to have something that deserves our admiration and respect, even if it is accompanied by much that we have to abhor and reject... We need only a sense of our own limited part in the whole human story to accept [this] presumption. It is only arrogance, or some analogous moral failing, that can deprive us of this.”
― Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism