Eric Liu Quotes

• We live in a great country. It’s time again to get religion about it.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Country

  Tags in Religions

• Throughout this country’s history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Country, History

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Conservatives, Citizenship, Immigrant

• 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

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Myself, Fastball, Pitcher

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

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Idea, Equality, Law

• You want to defend citizenship? Don’t persecute or isolate those without papers. Just live like a citizen. That’d be a first-class way to be American.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Citizenship, American, Question

• 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

  Topics in America

  Tags in Advantage, Young

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Obama, True, Crisis

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

  Eric Liu

  Topics in America

  Tags in Exceptional, President

• 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

  Topics in America

  Tags in People, Privilege

• Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics, it’s usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Citizenship, National

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Negative, Generation

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Celebrate, Diversity, True, Potential

• We all want merit to mean something, and we all may be tempted to reduce that meaning to something measurable and concrete like an SAT score. The reality, though, is that who deserves entry into an institution depends on what the institution exists to do.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Merit, Institution, Deserves

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in American, Movement

• 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

  Topics in America, College

  Tags in Leaders

• 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

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Citizenship, Conference, United States

•  

  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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in American, Minority, Poverty

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in World, Series

• 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

  Topics in College

  Tags in Action, Affirmative

Eric Liu (50)

Birth:	1968
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Educator, Journalist, Strategist, Writer

About

Eric Liu was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. He is an American writer, journalist, strategist, and founder of Citizen University. He served as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy at the White House between 1999 and 2000. He served as Speechwriter and Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Security Council at the White House from 1993 to 1994. He is currently a Senior Law Lecturer at the University of Washington School of Law. He is a regular columnist for CNN.com and a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com. He wrote the 'Teachings' column for Slate magazine from 2002 to 2005. He studied history at Yale University and graduate of Harvard Law School. He has written several books include: The Accidental Asian, Guiding Lights, and A Chinaman's Chance.

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Today's Anniversary - 3rd December

Births

• 1955 - Michael Musto
• 1897 - Kate O'Brien
• 1948 - Ozzy Osbourne
• 1950 - Alberto Juantorena
• 1951 - Rick Mears

Deaths

• 1962 - Mary Gilmore
• 1980 - Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley
• 1910 - Mary Baker Eddy
• 1919 - Pierre Auguste Renoir
• 1894 - Robert Louis Stevenson