Eric Liu Quotes

• Today’s multiracial Americans are at greater liberty to choose how they’d like to be seen, and under less pressure to pass for white.

   

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in American, Liberty

• 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

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Meaning, Competing, Interests

• The summer of 1991, I took $2,000 of my savings and a desktop program, and I asked my friends to write 800 words about something they cared about. I got eight or nine articles and put them together. It was no frills, black and white, no graphics. I printed them out and just dumped piles around D.C.

   

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Summer, Friends

• Race in America has always centered on our mutual agreement not to see each other. White or non-white. Black or non-black. Mongoloid, Hindoo. We’ve always bought into to the crudest, humanity-denying forms of sorting.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in America

  Tags in Race

• My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II, and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Air Force, Grandfather, Chinese

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in American, Effectiveness

• The Boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay forever young or to stop aging. But it is possible, by committing to show up for others in community after community, to earn a measure of immortality.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Community

• Like the ‘little emperors’ of one-child China, too many Boomers were taught early that the world was made (or saved) for their comfort and enjoyment. They behaved accordingly, with a self-indulgence that was wholly rational, given their situation.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in China, Emperors, Comfort, Enjoyment

• The Boomers have modeled a set of bad habits, and one grand gesture is not going to unwind all those bad habits.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Bad, Habits

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Citizenship, Weapon

• Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in System, Government

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Lucky, Citizens

• Why should citizenship be a matter of birth? The premise held by those who want to end birthright citizenship is that some people deserve it and some do not – that the status shouldn’t be handed out automatically. Frankly, that’s a premise worth considering.

   

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Citizenship, Birthright

• You cannot mistake Bush’s clarity of purpose. He believes in a story about freedom and opportunity that makes his followers feel like they aren’t just ticking their days down but are part of something larger than themselves.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Opportunity

  Tags in Freedom

• ‘The Purpose-Driven Life’ is not just a mega-bestselling work of Christian faith; it is the thing that every voter, secular or not, yearns for.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Christian, Faith

• Many smart folks seem to think that if you just get your metaphors and messages right, you’ll win. That if you start describing what you favor as a ‘moral value’ – ‘affordable health care is a moral value’ etc., – then you’ll appeal to red-state voters.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Moral, Value, Healthcare

• Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the ’04 elections is that politics is a word game.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Word, Game

• True fans of the Constitution, like true fans of the national pastime, acknowledge the critical role of human judgment in making tough calls. We don’t expect flawless interpretation. We expect good faith. We demand honesty.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in True, Constitution, Human, Judgment

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Judges, Deviation, Permissible

• Republicans say they want citizenship to truly mean something. Let’s be equal-opportunity about it and test everyone, including those very Republicans and others whose forbears came here generations ago.

  Eric Liu

  Topics in Opportunity

  Tags in Republicans, Citizenship

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 - 4th December

Births

• 1860 - Lillian Russell
• 1950 - Steven Jay Bernstein
• 1925 - Albert Bandura
• 1875 - Rainer Maria Rilke
• 1910 - Alex North

Deaths

• 1963 - Robert Hamer
• 1971 - Shunryu Suzuki
• 1952 - Karen Horney
• 1649 - William Drummond
• 1679 - Thomas Hobbes