We cannot afford to be color blind. We have to be color brave. We have to be willing, as teachers and parents and entrepreneurs and scientists, we have to be willing to have proactive conversations about race with honesty and understanding and courage, not because it's the right thing to do, but because it's the smart thing to do, because our businesses and our products and our science, our research, all of that will be better with greater diversity.
If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why?
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is the most overrated virtue?
Values & belief
Question
What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong?
Values & belief
If silence seems to give approval, then remaining silent is cowardly.
'If You Ask Me' column, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University, September 1944 source ↗
Others on this question
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Mellody Hobson
Co-chief executive and president of Ariel Investments
Abby Wambach
United States international footballer, 2001–2015
GIVE ME THE RESPECT I'VE EARNED AND GIVE IT TO MY WOLF PACK TOO.
Recorded
Barnard College commencement address, Radio City Music Hall, New York, Speakola, 16 May 2018
source ↗
Mikhail Gorbachev
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1985–1991; President of the Soviet Union 1990–1991
Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.
Richard Feynman
Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
Recorded
Caltech commencement address, Pasadena, California, Caltech Engineering and Science (Caltech Library archive), 1 June 1974
source ↗
More from Eleanor Roosevelt
View profile →Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.
Recorded
You Learn by Living (1960), Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University, 1960
source ↗
Tolerance ought only to be a preliminary step which allows us to get to know other people, and which prevents us from setting up bars, just because they may be of a different race or religion. The real value of any relationship is the fact that we learn to like people in spite of our differences.
Recorded
'My Day' syndicated newspaper column, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University, 24 November 1943
source ↗
Our trouble is that we do not demand enough of the people who represent us. We are responsible for their activities… we must spur them to more imagination and enterprise in making a push into the unknown; we must make clear that we intend to have responsible and courageous leadership.
Recorded
Tomorrow is Now, published posthumously, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University, 1963
source ↗
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