Eric Liu Quotes

In the end, a new Americanization movement can't just be about listing our privileges and immunities, which we catalog in our laws. It also has to be about reinforcing our duties, which we convey in our habits.
Eric Liu

End, Movement, Laws

If half-black Barack Obama had decided years ago to call himself white - which his genes certainly entitled him to do - his story would have carried very different meaning. If millions of part-black people had followed him into whiteness, then the N.A.A.C.P. would be in true crisis.
Eric Liu

Crisis, True, Him

The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?
Eric Liu

Time, Someone, Done

We tend to think of politics as bad, full of dirty tricks, negative ads, big campaigns, but I am here to explore the original meaning of politics, which is positive and has to do with balancing competing interests and looking for solutions.
Eric Liu

Politics, Positive, Bad

What we should celebrate more than diversity is what we do with it. How do we bring everyone in the tent and create something together? In a twenty-first century way that activates our true potential, we all need to become sworn-again.
Eric Liu

True, Together, Become

When Bryan Price taught me how to throw a changeup, he made me see myself. All my life, I've been the equivalent of a fastball pitcher - trying to use blazing speed and brute force to wow the people around me.
Eric Liu

Life, Trying, Made

After watching my first World Series in 1977, I wanted to be Reggie Jackson. I bought a big Reggie poster. I ate Reggie candy bars. I entered a phase during which I insisted on having the same style of glasses Reggie had: gold wire frames with the double bar across.
Eric Liu

After, Same, Big

America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush.
Eric Liu

America, Likes, Obama

Americans need to call on Boomers, in their next act onstage, to behave like grown-ups. And there is no better way for them to do this than to guide young people to lives of greater meaning, effectiveness, and purpose.
Eric Liu

Young, Purpose, Lives

As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us.
Eric Liu

Enough, Lucky, Asked

Conservatives forget that citizenship is more than a thing to withhold from immigrants. Progressives forget it's more than a set of rights.
Eric Liu

Forget, Rights, Immigrants

From the right, you get demagogues shouting about brown-skinned anchor babies and clamoring to deport the undocumented. From the left, you get advocacy for the oppressed but otherwise, when it comes to national civic identity, mainly silence.
Eric Liu

Silence, Left, National

Great numbers of Asian Americans do not fit the model minority or 'tiger family' stereotypes, living instead in multigenerational poverty far from the mainstream.
Eric Liu

Family, Great, Living

Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week, at a national citizenship conference I organize, thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room.
Eric Liu

Experience, Someone, Become

Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test.
Eric Liu

Age, Time, Here

I had heard so much negative talk about our generation, that we're slackers and young fogies, that I knew wasn't true of the people I know.
Eric Liu

True, Young, Negative

I know many people on the left are suspicious of words like Americanization. To them, it can sound like a cover for white privilege and warmongering. It suggests arrogance and groupthink. But these connotations are not fixed. It is in our power to reshape them by recalling the best of America.
Eric Liu

Power, Best, Words

Identity in America is complicated but it's also simple: it's about whom you identify with and who identifies with you.
Eric Liu

Simple, America, Identity

If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country.
Eric Liu

Work, Hard, Country

If whiteness were of no particular advantage, then having a fuller color wheel of skin tones would be purely a matter of celebration. But whiteness - just a drop of it - does still carry privilege. You learn that very young in America.
Eric Liu

America, Young, Learn

Imagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation.
Eric Liu

America, Perfect, College

In the end no segregationist scheme has withstood the force of a simple idea: equality under law.
Eric Liu

Equality, Simple, End

In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite.
Eric Liu

End, While, Action

It turns out umpires and judges are not robots or traffic cameras, inertly monitoring deviations from a fixed zone of the permissible. They are humans.
Eric Liu

Humans, Judges, Traffic

Jeremy Lin is the only Asian American in the NBA today and one of the few in any professional U.S. sport. His arrival is surely leading other talented Asian American athletes this week to contemplate a pro career.
Eric Liu

Today, Career, American

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Writer

Born: 1968

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