Asian American Quotes

#1. I want to be a representative and be a role model for the Asian American community.

Jeremy Lin

#2. Kusewera, an organization that fosters orphanages in Africa and the Philippines and encourages through creative play and education. Anything and everything that supports cancer research. East West Players, the oldest and biggest Asian American theater in the U.S.

Reggie Lee

#3. It's funny - when I started acting, I didn't know I was going to be talking about Asian-American issues so much. You know what, though? It just comes with the territory, being ethnic.

Justin Chon

#4. This omission of Asian Americans from history can lead to Asian American students in college internalizing the belief that they have not contributed to and are not full members of society or higher education.

Samuel D. Museus

#5. Nationally, more than one million Asian American entrepreneurs create jobs in their communities, helping fuel local commerce. In New York, we have seen firsthand how this community has helped drive our economy forward through hard work and ingenuity.

Nydia Velazquez

#6. It's not at all my objective to become an Asian-American star.

Daniel Wu

#7. Yes, we become stronger when black and whites, Latino, Asian American, Native American, when all of us stand together.

Bernie Sanders

#8. OK, it was black, it was below grade, I was female, Asian American, young, too young to have served. Yet I think none of the opposition in that sense hurt me.

Maya Lin

#9. Bemoan being lower-middle-class and colored in a police state that protects only rich white people and movie stars of all races, though I can't think of any Asian-American ones.

Paul Beatty

#10. Coming out of college into the draft, being Asian-American and being from Harvard, that's not going to be an advantage because of stereotypes.

Jeremy Lin

#11. It is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history.

Maya Angelou

#12. I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. Johnny Tam is the first one.

Tess Gerritsen

#13. As an Asian-American actor, I believe it is important to never settle for the status quo. I feel a responsibility to do everything in my power to create positive perceptions of Asian Americans through my work.

Ian Anthony Dale

#14. As an Asian American at pilot season you take whatever there is.

Reggie Lee

#15. I don't have a problem with these Arizona laws. I have a problem with Chicano, Gay and Lesbian, Asian-American and African-American histories not being taught in American History courses.

M.G. Hardie

#16. Hawaii's own Patsy Mink served as the first congresswoman of color and first Asian American woman in the House; she later sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Colleen Hanabusa

#17. There have been, in recent years, many Asian American pioneers in the public eye who've defied the condescendingly complimentary 'model minority' stereotype: actors like Lucy Liu, artists like Maya Lin, moguls like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. They are known, often admired.

Eric Liu

#18. I think it was hard for people to cast me as an ethnic, as an Asian American woman.

Chloe Bennet

#19. Working on 'Fresh Off the Boat' has been really enlightening to me because it's made me actually think about the roles that Asians and Asian-American women have played in media. Not because I didn't think it was important before, but because before, I was really focused on just paying my rent.

Constance Wu

#20. Asian Americans haven't had as many opportunities as other people to build their careers in Hollywood, just because there hasn't been that much of an interest, especially in Asian American males.

Daniel Wu

#21. When I was growing up, Asians were so few and far between as to be almost invisible. And so the idea of an Asian American movement or an Asian American thrust in this country was unthinkable.

Grace Lee Boggs

#22. You don't get respect for being an Asian-American basketball player in the U.S.

Jeremy Lin

#23. There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.

Edward James Olmos

#24. We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.

Roger Ebert

#25. I'm Asian-American, and I was the only Chinese girl growing up in a white school in San Diego. So I understood what it was like to be different, to always want to fit in and never feel like you ever could.

Tess Gerritsen

#26. To be honest, I'm really into folk music, and I love Big Phony. I like Priscilla Ahn, and yeah, I really support Asian-American artists.

Justin Chon

#27. It's interesting for myself, growing up as an Asian-American filmmaker. Coming into the industry, my parents always said, "No one's going to give you the opportunity. You just have to do the work. Be better than everyone else, so they can't deny it."

Daniel Radcliffe

#28. I have hidden my race for 22 books. I have hidden behind my married name, which is very Caucasian, because I didn't feel safe coming out with it. I didn't feel that the market would really accept me. I think I felt it's time to start bringing in an Asian-American point of view.

Tess Gerritsen

#29. Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.

Maya Lin

#30. I'm very humbled and honored. I'm very thankful to the Asian-American Community for all their support!

Jeremy Lin

#31. Affirmative action benefits NO ONE. It discriminates against Asian American and White students, while promoting negative stereotypes about the competency of African American students -- that they only got in because of their race, not merit.

Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam

#32. Personally, sometimes I'll lament the journey of an Asian-American actor, walking into audition rooms in 1999.

Kelvin Yu

#33. No matter what happens, we couldn't let people say Asian-American actors can't act.

Mako

#34. I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.

Bharati Mukherjee

#35. A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.

Robert Morgan

#36. Obviously the Asian American community wants you to do well. They are cheering you on no matter what the circumstances.

Michael Chang

#37. I think we have to really focus on the issues much more than we may have in the past. I think we have to seek to create coalitional strategies that go beyond racial lines. We need to bring black communities, Chicano communities, Puerto Rican communities, Asian American communities together.

Angela Davis

#38. I'm a chairman on the Board of Governors for the East-West Players, the longest-running Asian-American theater company in America.

George Takei

#39. Growing up as an Asian American in this society, there were a lot of times where you feel isolated or out of place as an Asian. And growing up in White America, that's absolutely my experience. And I think that's why I got into acting because I wanted to be anybody else but Asian.

Ming-Na Wen

#40. Jeremy Lin is the only Asian American in the NBA today and one of the few in any professional U.S. sport. His arrival is surely leading other talented Asian American athletes this week to contemplate a pro career.

Eric Liu

#41. Being the only Asian-American in the State Legislature, I've had no choice but to reach across the aisle.

Grace Meng

#42. For me, I'm just trying to be the best at what I do. I'll wave an Asian American flag if I get that opportunity. I'm not hiding or trying to discredit my background or anything, I just haven't had the opportunity.

Chad Hugo

#43. I consider myself an American, not an Asian, not even an Asian-American although people can't get away from the freaking labels that society needs to pigeonhole us." There

Toni Anderson

#44. Our atmosphere can't tell the difference between emissions from an Asian factory, the exhaust from a North American SUV, or deforestation in South America or Africa

Ban Ki-moon

#45. I think I would like to see more roles for South Asian performers that are more inclusive and part of the American Diaspora, the American tapestry, perhaps the way that African American and Hispanic roles have developed.

Aasif Mandvi

#46. Try being an indie author, a minority author, a woman, and a person with health issues in the world of traditional - that's where you are clearly 'different' and marginalized. I am all of that, yet I am still here and smiling. Life is good!

Kailin Gow

#47. As we women know, there are so many other hurdles that we have to cross that I would love it if we could stop having the race conversation so that we can get women further on. You know, a female president now that we have an African American president. Maybe we can get an Asian female, a gay person?

Octavia Spencer

#48. My pulses quicken. The thunderous sound of my heart beating fills my eardrums. I'm jealous of a dead girl. Why? Because I think I'm in love with her boyfriend.

Kat Lieu

#49. I was certain t find the familiar sting of salt, but what I needed to know was what kind: kitchen, sweat, tears or the sea.

Monique Truong

#50. We are Germans. We are Armenians. French, Italian, Russian, American, Asian, African ... many other nationalities. We are Christians, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu. We are black, we are white. We are a community of some many differences, so complex and yet so simple. We do not need to have war!

Michael Jackson

#51. I met a woman who told me that she wasn't attracted to Asians. "No worries," I said. "I'm not attracted to racists

Simon Tam

#52. I learned that instead of relying on and imitating American music, there is a better chance for an Asian artist to succeed if he or she follows his or her own culture.

Rain

#53. Only on a few occasions had I ever been comfortable showing my body off, and now here I was, taking a job where Asian boobs and ass ran free.

Teresa Lo

#54. Alcohol, I had learned, was an eloquent if somewhat inaccurate interpreter. I had placed my trust that December night in glass after glass of it, eager not for drink but for a bit of talk.

Monique Truong

#55. The heads of leading American universities say that if they selected applicants based on grades alone, their student bodies would be 100 percent Asian.

Paul Achleitner

#56. She believed being so free with her sexuality was empowering, but I wouldn't say taking home a douchebag who would laugh about the encounter with his friend later is a step forward in the feminist movement.-Lily

Teresa Lo

#57. I am forced to admit that I am, to them, nothing but a series of destinations with no meaningful expanses in between.

Monique Truong

#58. 'The Green Turtle' was created in the 1940s by a cartoonist named Chu Hing, one of the first Asian Americans to work in the American comic book industry.

Gene Luen Yang

#59. I have no intention of ever writing beauty tips on how to make an African-American nose look slimmer or Asian eyes look bigger. That's degrading. Asian eyes are what's beautiful about you and what makes you different.

Iman

#60. I really dislike the fact that Asian males are constantly emasculated, whether it's American TV or films. You see it all the time, and it's so weird that they don't see sexuality in Asian men.

Daniel Wu

#61. I now believe truth lies not in logic but in hope, both past and future. I believe hope can surprise you. It can survive the odds against it, all sorts of contradictions, and certainly any skeptic's rationale of relying on proof through fact.

Amy Tan

#62. Life's always a big fucking compromise. You don't always get what you want, no matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how good you are. That's a myth. We're all hanging in the best way we can.

Amy Tan

#63. In American culture you leave home at 18. In the Asian culture, your parents don't really want you to leave home. So my parents just thought I was going to be one of those kids. I was like, "I'm never going to make a living at whatever I do." I just liked pretty things.

Jason Wu

#64. For the girl without words, there is laughter for what is light, gesture for want, and tears for all that is dark. There is not much more. Names are nothing but extravagance.

Lois-Ann Yamanaka

#65. I make American films for American audiences and Asian films for Asian audiences.

Jackie Chan

#66. They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#67. The major economies are not American anymore. They are Asian and South American.

David Douglas Duncan

#68. In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.

Bill Gates

#69. I believe that reappropriation can be a powerful tool for creating social change. Sometimes, things like irony, satire, or humor are more effective in getting at difficult truths or concepts like white privilege, orientalism, and the exoticization of culture.

Simon S. Tam

#70. It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight!

Barack Obama

#71. I look in the eyes and I see the heart. As long as it's a human story. I would like to turn on my television and see African American, Hispanic, Asian as well as Caucasian. And I think there are probably more people like me.

Angela Bassett

#72. Our theme for this year's festivities, Dreams and Challenges of Asian Pacific Americans, speaks to the many generations of Asian Pacific Americans who worked hard to overcome economic hardship, racism and other barriers in their pursuit of the American dream.

Lucille Roybal-Allard

#73. The challenge to America is to extend to Asia the defensive shield of American power in forms consonant with Asian freedom and self-respect.

Ferdinand Marcos

#74. American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading, math and science. We're even trailing France.

Suzanne Fields

#75. There are aspects of Asian culture in my work, but it's really rooted in an American experience - transcendentalism, '60s counterculture, punk rock.

Fred Tomaselli

#76. You have to believe in its principles. Anything is possible, as long as it's for the good of the world. Make the exception. Live exceptionally. And if you can't do that, maybe we should consider whether you're right for the project. Think about it, then let's talk tomorrow.

Amy Tan

#77. All my favorite establishments were either overly crowded or pathetically empty. People either sipped fine vintages in celebration or gulped intoxicants of who cares what kind, drowning themselves in a lack of moderation, raising a glass to lower inhibitions, imbibing spirits to raise their own.

Monique Truong

#78. Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided
with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.

P. J. O'Rourke

#79. By transporting Asian species to North America, and North American species to Australia, and Australian species to Africa, and European species to Antarctica, we are, in effect, reassembling the world into one enormous supercontinent - what biologists sometimes refer to as the New Pangaea.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#80. Asian face and local language skills to handle the cash. I had just returned to the States from Vietnam, having left the military under a cloud, the origins of which I was able to understand only years later. My mother, the American half of the marriage, had just died; I had no brothers or sisters;

Barry Eisler

#81. I hope that at this moment you are thinking of yourself as a human being rather than as an American, Asian, European, African, or member of any particular country. These loyalties are secondary.

Dalai Lama

#82. Because the Asian market is so omnivorous, it affects all the shark populations up and down the Central and South American coast, and to a certain extent the East Coast of the United States as well.

Peter Benchley

#83. Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy.

Wesley Morris

#84. Asian Pacific American Heritage Month provides us all an opportunity to reflect upon this community's many contributions and to celebrate its bright future.

Nydia Velazquez

#85. We do have Museums of African American Art in the United States, and there is a National Museum of Women's Art. However, I believe Latinos are best served by displaying their art next to the art of other groups, particularly North American, European, and even Asian artists.

Mari Carmen Ramirez

#86. Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.

Maxine Hong Kingston

#87. Most people can't tell if I'm European, Asian, African or American. Isn't it good to know my ancestors weren't racist motherfuckers?

Daniel Marques

#88. It seems like the best escape games come from Japan for some reason. It makes me proud.

Denis Markell

#89. And my point was one I think that you'd agree with, which is there's no room in America for a black racist, a Latino racist, or a white racist, or an Asian racist, or a Native American racist. Now, we're either color blind or we're not color blind.

Newt Gingrich

#90. There is a kind of misconception that Asian-Americans are not as American as European-Americans.

B. D. Wong

#91. We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#92. In the final analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on the revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American people who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population.

Lin Biao

#93. Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.

Tess Gerritsen

#94. Hillary Clinton was actually inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame yesterday. Hillary said she's very proud of her Irish heritage or her Italian heritage or her Asian heritage. Whatever it takes to seal the deal with you guys. I've got to get into that Oval Office.

Jimmy Fallon

#95. Today, former President Bill Clinton met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il and convinced him to release two American journalists that have been jailed since March. Isn't that great? This is big, yeah. Or as Clinton calls it, another Asian happy ending.

Conan O'Brien

#96. But to pretend that all was right with the world, I first had to know what was wrong.

Amy Tan

#97. I am suspicious - first of all, in myself - of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people's tendency to ... vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other 'exotic' ways of understanding.

Adrienne Rich

#98. When a dish works, it works for everyone, whether you're Asian, European, African, American or anybody else.

Joel Robuchon

#99. I hope Hong Kong and Asia wants to hire American Asian actresses as much as Hollywood has been hiring Chinese actors from Asia.

Ming-Na Wen

#100. Your uniqueness is your greatest strength, not how well you emulate others.

Simon S. Tam