Diversity Quotes

We have collected and put the best diversity quotes in the following categories. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

May these diversity quotes on many subjects inspire you to never give up and keep working towards your goals. Who knows—success could be just around the corner.

Diversity is a word which indicates the variety, or ranges of differences which exist in a group. In sociology and politics regarding multiculturalism, diversity, is quality of social entities (neighborhoods, student bodies, nations, etc.) with members who have identifiable differences in their cultural backgrounds or lifestyles.

See also: Values Quotes and Pluralism Quotes

Diversity is Pluralism

Diversity is never a weakness, it’s always a strength. – Tim Cook

Diversity is not a quota, or something to check off a list; it’s an expectation. – Sundar Pichai

Diversity is not about who you are or what you look like. It’s about how we think and act. – Dr. Edward Tufte

Diversity isn’t just about who you hire or what they look like, it’s also about thinking differently as leaders in driving an innovative culture within your organization. – Satya Nadella

Diversity isn’t just skin deep; it’s cultural, religious, political and beyond. – Barack Obama

Diversity matters because if you don’t have diverse perspectives, you’ll never come up with an innovative idea for solving a problem. – Jami Miscik

Accordingly, globalization is not only something that will concern and threaten us in the future, but something that is taking place in the present and to which we must first open our eyes. – Ulrich Beck

Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity. Also: “Intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world”. – Robert Alan

Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity. – John Hume

Everybody has a story… Once you know another person’s true story, it changes your life because you develop some empathy and it makes you a better person. – Ron Chew

How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance – the one value that is indispensable in creating community. – Barbara Jordan

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival. – René Dubos

I am grateful for my life because I have been able to do things that help people understand each other better. – Nelson Mandela

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think that the good and the great are only separated by the willingness to sacrifice. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

If we are open and we prepare for promoting dialogue and love, and a better understanding of each other, and tolerance and so forth, that’s what the world will become, a more tolerant, loving place. – Russell Simmons

If your goal is to be less prejudiced than your parents, then it won’t work because they’re still going to be more prejudiced than you. – Tim Wise

Inclusion and tolerance of others does not weaken us but makes us stronger. – Dalai Lama XIV

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. – Dr. Maya Angelou

It’s hard to hate up close. – William Faulkner

My favorite single line from the Qur’an is from Surah 49:13, which says that God made us different nations and tribes that we may come to know one another, in the sense that diversity is holy and it was created by God. What we humans are meant to do with that diversity is engage in positive interaction with each other and come to know one another – because knowledge is holy and pluralism or positive engagement is holy. – Eboo Patel

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. – Mahatma Gandhi

Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience. – Yo-Yo Ma

Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. – Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences. – Mikhail Gorbachev

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. – Maya Angelou

Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures. – Cesar Chavez

Racism sucks, plain and simple. – Phil Dixon

Respect for the rights of others means peace. – Benito Juarez

The beauty in diversity is when you see people who are different from you accomplishing things that you didn’t think were possible. – John Legend

The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? – Pablo Casals

The more diverse your team is, the greater its creativity will be. – Margaret Heffernan

The more diverse your team members are from one another, the better decisions they’ll make on behalf of your company. – Michelle Obama

The most diverse group will produce the best ideas. – Jack Ma

We are going forward with the idea of a multicultural, a multinational state, trying to live in unity, at the same time respecting our diversity…But we need to all come together so we can live united. – Evo Morales

We are not a collection of communities from diverse backgrounds to form an alliance; we are one community. – Dr. Maya Angelou

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves. – Galileo Galilei

We have the ability to achieve, if we master the necessary goodwill, a common global society blessed with a shared culture of peace that is nourished by the ethnic, national and local diversities that enrich our lives. – Mahnaz Afkhami

We live now in a global village and we are in one single family. It’s our responsibility to bring friendship and love from all different places around the world and to live together in peace. – Jackie Chan

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race. – Kofi Annan

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. – Octavio Paz

When we’re talking about diversity, it’s not a box to check. It is a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us. – Ava DuVernay

When you have people with different backgrounds working together, they come up with new ideas that no one would have thought about on their own. – Richard Branson

You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. – Malcolm X

Diversity

QuotesFrom Wikiquote

• The presence of different nations under the same sovereignty…provides against the servility which flourishes under the shadow of a single authority. … Liberty provokes diversity, and diversity preserves liberty by supplying the means of organisation. … This diversity in the same State is a firm barrier against the intrusion of the government beyond the political sphere which is common to all into the social department which escapes legislation and is ruled by spontaneous laws. This sort of interference is characteristic of an absolute government, and is sure to provoke a reaction, and finally a remedy. That intolerance of social freedom which is natural to absolutism is sure to find a corrective in the national diversities, which no other force could so efficiently provide. The co-existence of several nations under the same State is a test, as well as the best security of its freedom. It is also one of the chief instruments of civilisation; and, as such, it is in the natural and providential order, and indicates a state of greater advancement than the national unity which is the ideal of modern liberalism.
  • Lord Acton, ‘Nationality’, Home and Foreign Review (July 1862), quoted in Lord Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays, eds. John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence (1907), pp. 289–290

• One of the difficult problems of the world was to secure peace, freedom, and democratic government in countries inhabited by more than one community. It could not be done by one community seeking to dominate the others, but only by fair dealing and mutual tolerance. He sometimes thought that those who adopted extreme nationalist ideas did so because they had no constructive ideas and because an appeal to race prejudice saved them from an intolerable burden of thought. In his view the variations in the make-up of a community increased its value.
  • Clement Attlee, broadcast from Singapore (6 September 1954), quoted in The Times (7 September 1954), p. 7

• A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice.
  • Saul Bellow, Nobel Prize lecture (12 December 1976)

• Every person, every race, every nation, has its own particular keynote which it brings to the general chord of life and of humanity. Life is not a monotone but a many-stringed harmony, and to this harmony is contributed a distinctive note by each individual.
  • Annie Besant. In The Birth of New India: A Collection of Writings and Speeches on Indian Affairs, p. 85

• A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from realizing the full import of their activity. These more numerous and more varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond; they consequently put a premium on variation in action. They secure a liberation of powers which remain suppressed as long as the incitations to action are partial, as they must be in a group which in its exclusiveness shuts out many interests.
  • John Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916), Chapter 7: The Democratic Ideal

• Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many common features. They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual—these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion.
  • Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (1988) pp. 5-6 (paperback, 1989).

• I do not claim any ability to read God’s mind. I am sure of only one thing. When we look at the glory of stars and galaxies in the sky and the glory of forests and flowers in the living world around us, it is evident that God loves diversity. Perhaps the universe is constructed according to a principle of maximum diversity.
  • Freeman Dyson, Progress In Religion : A Talk By Freeman Dyson, acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize, Washington National Cathedral (9 May 2000)

• A foundational assumption of the dogma of diversity, as proselytized on college campuses, is that a community becomes stronger when its members don’t have much in common. And further: When we dwell upon—indeed, fetishize—the superficial differences of sex, race, or ethnicity, we will be stronger still. This is a dumbass idea. Yet it is seldom held up for examination or debate. It should be obvious that no multicultural paradise would be possible at all if its citizens weren’t free to peaceably express their diverse views. Free speech is prior to diversity, as the philosophers say. It is a necessary condition of diversity, and probably diversity’s greatest guarantor. To extol inclusion at the expense of speech is incoherent and unserious—a mere reflex of campus ideology in our era of discontent. Unserious, yes, but not unprecedented.
  • Andrew Ferguson, “Hurrah for the First Amendment, but…” (23 March 2018), The Weekly Standard

• Well, I could be wrong, but I believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era.
  • Will Ferrell, as Ron Burgundy in “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (2004), [1]

• Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.
  • Mikhail Gorbachev, Nobel Lecture, June 5, 1991.

• In all your communications, be conscious of your group’s diversity. The group you’re speaking with is likely more diverse than what you’re used to. There may be children and teenagers as well as adults. For many or most, English won’t be their first language. They probably live in multiple countries, have had a broad diversity of experiences, and and hold a wide array of beliefs. This creates a bunch of potential pitfalls. Your jokes may fall flat or offend people. Cultural references (sports, movies, history) may be meaningless. Even for those of us who aren’t American, it’s easy to come across as U.S.-centric. Metaphors, allusions and convoluted sentence structures may not be worth the time they’d take readers to untangle, and make translations much more difficult. High diversity argues for a style that’s literal, straightforward, and well-structured.
  • Sue Gardner A little guide to working with online communities March 21, 2016

• If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.
  • John F. Kennedy, Address at American University, Washington D.C. (10 June 1963)

• Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
  • Robert F. Kennedy, Extremism, Left and Right, pt. 3, “The Pursuit of Justice” (1964).

• Leisure for reflection, somewhere near the end of a long career, leads me to thank God for allowing me to live in a society sufficiently free of Governmental control to allow the citizenry expression of its true diversity, which is to say, diversity of thought.
  • David Mamet, A Secret Knowledge, p. 16

• In the Mahabharata, the ceremony for the oath of a new king includes the admonition: ‘Be like a garland-maker, O king, and not like a charcoal burner.’ The garland symbolizes social coherence; it is a metaphor for dharmic diversity in which flowers of many colors and forms are strung harmoniously for the most pleasing effect. In contrast, the charcoal burner is a metaphor for the brute-force reduction of diversity into homogeneity, where diverse living substances are transformed into uniformly lifeless ashes.
  • Indras Net by Rajiv Malhotra, p.10., 1st ed.

• Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
  5 And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.
  And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.
  But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man, to profit withal.
  For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit;
  To another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit;
  To another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues.
  But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally, as he will.
  • Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 as quoted by John Locke, An Essay for the Understanding of St. Paul’s Epistles (1812) pp.165-166

• Because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world.
  • Ronald Reagan on 10 August 1988, while signing the Bill Providing Restitution for the Wartime Internment of Japanese-American Civilians, quoting himself at the funeral of Kazuo Masuda in December 1945.

• Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.
  • Gene Roddenberry, Gene Roddenberry: The Star Trek Philosophy.

• The current ideology of religious harmony emphasizes similarity—different religions are harmonious because they say the same thing; The older doctrine of multiple paths lays stress on their diversity—these paths are valid because they serve genuine different needs and answer to different natures. In short, they serve humanity not by being the same but by being different.
  • Ram Swarup. Ramakrishna Mission. (1986). Ramakrishna Mission: In search of a new identity.

• There are a great number of LGBT people across ‘Star Trek’ fandom. The show always appealed to people that were different — the geeks and the nerds, and the people who felt they were not quite a part of society, sometimes because they may have been gay or lesbian. ‘Star Trek’ is about acceptance and the strength of the Starship Enterprise is that it embraces diversity in all its forms.
  • George Takei in “Here’s why George Takei says ‘Star Trek’ fans are ‘totally accepting’ of sexual orientation”, by Aly Weisman, Business Insider, Jun. 30, 2015.

• “Diversity” has become an omnipresent emblem of openness and fairness. It is now an essential component of corporate responsibility: there is a widespread expectation for companies to show their commitment to “diversity”, elements of a “diversity” policy and evidence (e.g., smiling pictures) of a diverse workforce in annual reports, websites, promotional and recruitment materials.
  • Steven Vertovec, “Diversity and the Social Imaginary” (2012)