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Diversity is about differences

• Diversity: The fact of many different types of things or people being included in something; a range of different things or people.  Oxford Dictionary
• Diversity: The condition of having or being composed of differing elements.  Merriam Webster
• Tolerance,  Unity,  Uniqueness,  Variety

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Diversity is the one thing we all have in common

• The difference between you and him and him and me isn’t different at all: we’re all different. Jarod Kintz
• Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common. Celebrate it every day.

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Diversity is nature’s way

• Whatever is natural admits of variety. Madame de Stael
• Uniformity is not nature’s way; diversity is nature’s way. Vandana Shiva
• Nature

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Diversity should be celebrated…

• Share our similarities, celebrate our differences. M. Scott Peck
• If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear. Gene Roddenberry
• I have a self-made quote: Celebrate diversity, practice acceptance and may we all choose peaceful options to conflict. Donzella Michele Malone
• In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction. Audre Lorde
• We should acknowledge differences; we should greet differences, until difference makes no difference anymore. Adela Allen

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… for it can bring great strength

• Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity. Robert Alan
• It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. Maya Angelou
• I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort, where we overlap. Ani DiFranco
• Strength lies in differences, not in similarities. Stephen Covey
• I feel my heart break to see a nation ripped apart by its own greatest strength–it’s diversity. Melissa Etheridge
• We need to reach that happy stage of our development when differences and diversity are not seen as sources of division and distrust, but of strength and inspiration. Josefa Iloilo
• Strength

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Diversity is a treasure that adds richness to human experience

• People need to see that far from being an obstacle, the world’s diversity of languages, religions, and traditions is a great treasure, affording us precious opportunities to recognize ourselves in others. Youssou N’Dour
• If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place. Margaret Mead
• The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people’s differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience. Jerome Nathanson

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The combination of our differences can create something beautiful…

• People may be said to resemble not the bricks of which a house is built, but the pieces of a picture puzzle, each differing in shape, but matching the rest, and thus bringing out the picture. Felix Adler
• We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color. Maya Angelou
• All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade. Leo Tolstoy
• We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams. Jimmy Carter
• America is not like a blanket—one piece of unbroken cloth. America is more like a quilt— many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven together by a common thread. Rev. Jesse Jackson
• The world is rational and creative. It’s a wonderful mystery for our minds to discover and celebrate. God’s everywhere and we are all different. That’s the beauty of it-the sheer diversity. What a tapestry to enjoy. Adam Williams
• There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen. There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.  Sun Tzu
• Beauty

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… in the same way that different musical notes create harmony…

• You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note. Doug Floyd
• The diversity of the family should be a cause of love and harmony, as it is in music where many different notes blend together in the making of a perfect chord. from the Baha’i Scriptures
• Harmony

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… or different flowers create a bouquet

• We are all flowers in the Great Spirit’s garden. We share a common root, and the root is Mother Earth.  The garden is beautiful because it has different colors in it, and those colors represent different traditions and cultural backgrounds. David Monongye
• A summer bouquet may include an assortment of flowers in a rainbow of colors. The variety makes the whole bouquet even more beautiful. I realize I am one flower in the wondrous bouquet of humanity.
• A lot of different flowers make a bouquet. Muslim Origin
• Flowers

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Acceptance of diversity is a measure of a civilisation

• Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained. H. Auden
• I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are, but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man. Sun Bear of the Chippewa Tribe

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Diversity sparks ideas and fosters innovation

• Collaborative cultures accelerate the evolution of ideas, because they nurture cross pollination. Competitive cultures slow down the rate of evolution by locking their ideas away. David Hodgson
• A diverse group of people can be more innovative than a homogenous group. There might be more friction and discomfort among people who think differently, but the output is more innovative. David Greenberg
• Differences are an opportunity, not an obstacle. The key is to remain open to hearing ideas so you can determine which ideas to combine to spark a better solution. Stephen Covey
• Ideas,  Innovation

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Diversity in thought makes better decisions

• Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise. James Surowiecki
• Decision making

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Diversity in thought better solves problems and challenges

• We need diversity of thought in the world to face the new challenges. Tim Berners-Lee
• Great achievements are not born from a single vision but from the combination of many distinctive viewpoints. Diversity challenges assumptions, opens minds, and unlocks our potential to solve any problems we may face.
• Diversity: the art of thinking independently together. Malcolm Stevenson Forbes
• Problem solving,  Challenge

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Where everyone agrees all the time, there is no progress or growth

• If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, both are useless. Darryl F. Zanuck
• If we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary. Dan Millman
• We find comfort among those who agree with us–growth among those who don’t. Frank A. Clark
• Differences challenge assumptions. Anne Wilson Schaef
• Progress,  Growth

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By valuing differences, we can find better ways together and achieve synergy

• The essence of synergy is to value differences—to respect them, to build on strengths, to compensate for weaknesses. Once people have experienced real synergy, they are never quite the same again. They know the possibility of having other such mind- expanding adventures in the future. Stephen Covey
• The greatest benefit of synergy is born in the diversity of perspectives. The highest value can be found in these variances.  Too much of the same does not create change in the same way, does not produce the sweetest fruits for all, and gets old quick.  Danielle Marie Crume
• Synergy is celebrating differences, teamwork, open-mindedness, and finding new and better ways together. Synergy means you can literally produce something with another person that neither of you could have produced   Stephen Covey
• Greetings, I am pleased to see that we are different. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us. Vulcan greeting
• Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people. Stephen Covey
• Synergy,  Unity,  Teamwork

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Diversity allows cultures to survive

• No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive. Mohandas K. Gandhi
• Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures. Cesar Chavez
• Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life. Octavio Paz

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We should always aim for unity, not uniformity

• The problem is not how to wipe out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact. Rabindranath Tagore
• Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety.  Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.  Mary Parker Follett
• What people mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should not be considered the same. Mary Parker Follett
• Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences. Mikhail Gorbachev
• Unity,  Uniqueness

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The key to harnessing diversity is tolerance…

• Toward no crimes have men shown themselves so cold- bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief. James Russell Lowell
• Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival. Rene Dubos
• Tolerance, inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected. Kofi Annan
• 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
• Tolerance

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… and open communication…

• To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. Tony Robbins
• Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another. Mary Catherine Bateson
• Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress. Mahatma Gandhi
• Communication

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… and open mindedness

• Differences are an opportunity, not an obstacle. The key is to remain open to hearing ideas so you can determine which ideas to combine to spark a better solution. Stephen Covey
• Over 7 billion people in this world and a single reality? Not very realistic. Open your minds. Lucas T. Andrietti
• Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. Leo Tolstoy
• Open mindedness

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In particular, remain open to and respect different points of view

• Right view is having no particular, fixed view, which means seeing that all views are limited, that no particular view is the only view. They’re all restricted, they’re all limited, they’re all fragmented. Actually, the right view is no view. Genpo Roshi
• I let go of my need to convince others of my point of view. When I remain open to all points of view, my dreams and desires will flow with nature’s desires. Deepak Chopra
• In reality, there are an infinite number of perspectives, but we act as if there were only one. Genpo Roshi
• Let’s consciously evolve as individuals and as a culture to a “second- tier” level of consciousness. Here, for the first time, we can hold multiple perspectives. No one is smart enough to be 100% wrong. Ken Wilber
• There is no truth. Only points of view. Dame Edith Sitwell
• To believe the world is only as you think it is, is stupid Carlos Castaneda
• Always respect another’s opinion and another’s point of view. Sri Sathya Sai Baba
• We find comfort among those who agree with us–growth among those who don’t. Frank A. Clark
• Over 7 billion people in this world and a single reality? Not very realistic. Open your minds. Lucas T. Andrietti
• Respect

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Only by accepting diversity can a society be free

• When a nation encourages the individual pursuit of happiness, there is no guarantee that everyone is going to like what everyone else is doing. That is part of freedom—tolerance of diversity.  Peter Gilman
• When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. Charles Evan Hughes
• The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. John F. Kennedy
• The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion. John F. Kennedy
• A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. Fredrich Hayek

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Embrace diversity as an adventure of discovery

• Embracing diversity is one adventure after another, opening new paths of discovery that connect an understanding to caring, listening, and sharing with others who are different than ourselves. April Holland
• If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure, you will find yourself endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter. Eleanor Roosevelt
• Discovery

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Look beyond race, gender, nationality

• One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings. Franklin Thomas
• Hating skin color is contempt for God’s divine creative imagination. Honoring it is appreciation for conscious, beautiful-love- inspired diversity. F. Hodge
• No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. If [people] can learn to hate they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Nelson Mandela

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Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness…

• Without judging or comparing myself to others, I enjoy the unique beauty in all of us.
• At bottom, every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. Friedrich Nietzsche
• You were born an original … Don’t die a copy. John Mason
• Diversity is not about how we differ. Diversity is about embracing one another’s uniqueness. Ola Joseph
• Uniqueness

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… and not allowing the tyranny of conformity to stamp it out

• The terrible tyranny of the majority. Ray Bradbury
• A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist. Pubilius Syrus

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Just because two things are different does not mean one is right and one is wrong

• You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Some people do things completely differently from the way you would do them. It does not mean that they are right or that you are wrong.  It means that people are different. There are things that people say which you would probably say in a different way, at a different time.  It does not mean that people are wrong to speak up, to speak out, or to speak their minds.  Nor does it mean that you are wrong for choosing not to do so.  It means that people are different.  Different is not right or wrong.  It is a reality. Differences become problems only when we choose to measure ourselves by our difference in an effort to determine who is right and who is wrong. Iyanla Vanzant

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Diversity celebrates the fact that people have different answers to the great mysteries of the Universe

• Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one’s own way to the highest, to one’s own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one’s ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication.  Algernon Black
• Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us. Karen Armstrong
• We are not here to match and homogenize and agree on every point. One size of spirituality does not fit all. We are here to be our divine selves, boldly, passionately, respectfully, to the absolute best of our ability — and this, this is more than enough. Sera Break
• In the matter of religion, people eagerly fasten their eyes on the difference between their own creed and yours; whilst the charm of the study is in finding the agreements and identities in all the religions of humanity. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Difference of opinion is helpful in religion. Thomas Jefferson
• Mystery

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The opposite of diversity is too horrible to contemplate

• If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite – the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singulary generic modern culture that takes for granted an impoverished environment – is a source of dismay. There is, indeed, a fire burning over the earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame, and re- inventing the poetry of diversity is perhaps the most important challenge of our times.  Wade Davis
• I can imagine nothing more terrifying than an Eternity filled with men who were all the same. The only thing which has made life bearable…has been the diversity of creatures on the surface of the globe. H. White
• The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. Thomas Stephen Szasz

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• All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade. Leo Tolstoy
• Although we are in different boats, you in your boat and we in our canoe, we share the same river of life. Chief Oren Lyons
• We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences. Eugene McCarthy William Sloane Coffin Jr.
• Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.
• Equality is not similarity. Equal merit does not mean that one is suited to the same tasks. George Sand
• For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us. Donald Williams
• Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress. Mahatma Gandhi
• If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. John F. Kennedy
• Judging others against our own standards is being egoistical. Respect everyone’s right to be different! Wai-Fatt Yee
• Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me. Carlos Fuentes
• There never were in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity. Michel de Montaigne
• We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders. Maya Angelou
• We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others are bright, some have weird names, but we have to learn to live in the same box.
• Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Theodore Roosevelt

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• Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. Margaret Mead
• You say freak, I say unique. Christian Baloga

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