Backgrounds Quotes

If you must know, my parents came from pretty hardscrabble backgrounds in the southern Midwest. I certainly didn't grow up poor, but I did spend my 20s and early 30s juggling temp jobs and choking on massive student-loan debt. ~ Meghan Daum

Ask for feedback from people with diverse backgrounds. Each one will tell you one useful thing. If you're at the top of the chain, sometimes people won't give you honest feedback because they're afraid. In this case, disguise yourself, or get feedback from other sources. ~ Steve Jobs

I love the plus (fashion) industry! It embraces a lot of women who would otherwise disappear into the background. I truly love what I do! ~ Liris Crosse

Surrounding myself with women of different backgrounds and on different paths and in different stages of their lives has become so valuable to me. ~ Brie Larson

Endless data show that diverse teams make better decisions. We are building products that people with very diverse backgrounds use, and I think we all want our company makeup to reflect the makeup of the people who use our products. That's not true of any industry really, and we have a long way to go. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

In a devastating critique, the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin once showed that if Terman had simply put together a randomly selected group of children from the same kinds of family backgrounds as the Termites - and ~ Malcolm Gladwell

...most things are right or wrong only in their backgrounds; few things are good or evil in themselves. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Schools, the institutions traditionally called upon to correct social inequality, are unsuited to the task; without economic opportunity to follow educational opportunity, the myth of equality can never become real. Far more than a hollow promise of future opportunity for their children, parents need jobs, income, and services. And children whose backgrounds have stunted their sense of the future need to be taught by example that they are good for more than they dared dream. ~ Kenneth Keniston

We've lived openly with our different backgrounds for years in this country. There's never been a problem. Do you think people are going to change overnight just because a madman is taking the reins of government?" "Nobody could have predicted that reasonable Germans would stand by as their Jewish neighbors were rounded up and exterminated. But when that madman came to power, everything changed, and reasonable people did nothing to stop it. They all tried to save their own skin first and foremost. ~ Ayse Kulin

I'm not here to disagree with people or try to change anyone's mind. I'm just here to accept and love others right where they are – no matter their belief systems or backgrounds. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

I found my place when I moved to London, where I chose to live, making my own tribe who were all from different backgrounds and places. The class thing is very dominant there, but in the cultural cross-fertilization, I felt a sense of belonging. ~ Neneh Cherry

There's also a lot of punch you get from doing an extreme closeup and have it just be that image with nothing around it. There's a clarity and precision and impact there that you sometimes lose if you put everything else in that background. ~ Jim Lee

Everyone tries to research your background. I have a real fear of celebrity and exposing my real self. ~ Matt Tong

I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that. ~ Denise Mina

Music is my passion, singing, performing. I play piano and musical theater is my background. ~ Janel Parrish

I think the varied backgrounds in the beginning were a plus. It took a while for people to understand what they were trying to do and get started, but it did provide for a lot of new ideas. ~ Jack Kilby

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory. ~ Neil Diamond

The life of nature we must meet halfway; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated; it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded. ~ John Burroughs

American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won't violate one another's privacies. This makes it a land of small talk. Two people greet each other happily, with friendliness, but might know each other for years before venturing basic questions about each other's backgrounds....In the East, I've heard it said, there's intimacy without friendship; in the West, there's friendship without intimacy. ~ Karan Mahajan

I will represent all of the people of Ohio, regardless of their background. I don't care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian or a vegetarian, I will be blind to race, religion or any kind of orientation. ~ Josh Mandel

When you have two different women coming from two very different backgrounds, it's fun for us because we get to explore how each one of them approaches their job and how they bring their own experiences to it. ~ Sasha Alexander

A lot of people who are actors and artists who work in Hollywood come from a background of abuse, and you can make abused people very fearful and they'll do what they're told. Hollywood definitely has a point of view that it sells. ~ Roseanne Barr

I am much less autistic now, compared to when I was young. I remember some behaviors like picking carpet fuzz and watching spinning plates for hours. I didn't want to be touched. I couldn't shut out background noise. I didn't talk until I was about 4 years old. I screamed. I hummed. But as I grew up, I improved. ~ Temple Grandin

Giving is a universal opportunity. Regardless of your age, profession, religion, income bracket, and background, you have the capacity to create change. ~ Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too. ~ Richie Sambora

There should be a background check every time a firearm is transferred. You shouldn't be able to go to a gun show and buy guns without a background check. There are Internet gun sales, classified ads in the newspapers - and you can buy guns without background checks. ~ Michael D. Barnes

Cities can be places that represent the best of our ideals: where Americans of all different backgrounds can come together and, through their interactions, and even through their unity, spawn true American greatness. ~ Cory Booker

I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing. ~ Terry Eagleton

Now learning a bit more about footballers I think what they need to do well, is someone who really wants to stay in the background and just be a strong support. ~ Anna Friel

I have a broad but not an expert or scholarly background in the Jewish tradition. I've tried to learn what I can from childhood, but I am not an expert on Jewish teachings. ~ Michael Sandel

I have a children's theater background, so I grew up performing for child audiences; it's sort of my specialty. I know the child audience pretty well - or felt like I did because I performed for them so much. I studied a lot about the child audience, about theater. So it was naturally a place that I gravitated to. ~ Linda Woolverton

I can't just listen to music walking down the street unless I have a reason to. I can't just listen to music as a piece of junk in the background. It drives me insane. ~ Mika.

One of Boomer's strong points is that he has a great background in just about everything. ~ Herbert Jefferson, Jr.

America's strength is not our diversity; our strength is our ability to unite people of different backgrounds around common principles. A common language is necessary to reach that goal. ~ Ernest Istook

Hoffmeier furnishes a sophisticated fresh approach to the Biblical Exodus traditions filled with detailed Egyptological background, and utterly indispensable because of its basis in recent, and in many cases as yet unpublished, archaeological data. This is a virtual encyclopedia of the Exodus. ~ Baruch Halpern

This scene was little more than a somewhat hollow ceremonial gesture. The real work of the conference had already begun, by a far smaller, more elite, and far less disparate set of individuals. All were white Westerners of elite backgrounds with more congruent temperaments and, as it turned out, goals. The first unofficial meetings between the leaders of the Big Four peacemakers - dubbed the Supreme Council - and their aides had been taking place for a week in a smaller chamber in the same building, and the maneuverings were afoot. It was nine weeks since the armistice ~ David A. Andelman

Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together. ~ Willa Cather

Uniting two halves of one soul is inevitable, but timing depends upon your level of spirituality. When the time is ripe, true soul mates find one another even if they are worlds apart - whether physically, on opposite sides of the globe, or spiritually, with contrasting lifestyles and backgrounds.

Here's wishing you the courage to keep growing so that you may know – or continue to know – the blessing of oneness. ~ Yehuda Berg

I'm wondering if there's a spell to make lightning flash in the background whenever I make an ominous resolution. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

I come from an improvisational background so I'm used to playing. I'm used to not knowing what exactly is going to come out. ~ Naomi Grossman

We love what we love, and shared fandoms bring people of all ages and backgrounds into one great tribe. ~ Margaret Stohl

For me, with any character, there are different ways that you approach understanding him, and in this film in particular, because I had the novel to refer to. It's always really helpful to have all of that information and all of those hundreds more words which give you an idea into the background and your character and all. ~ Asa Butterfield

Conservatives like Palin and Reagan and others do seem to love the series, but so do people of all political stripes and backgrounds. I speak about the series' "radiant simplicity." ~ Judith Thurman

We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man's mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds. ~ Steven Biko

People prefer to be with people like themselves. For all the celebration of 'diversity,' it's sameness that dominates. Most people favor friendship with those who have similar backgrounds, interests and values. It makes for more shared experiences, easier conversations, and more comfortable silences. Despite many exceptions, the urge is nearly universal. It's human nature. ~ Robert J. Samuelson

The wounding legacy of segregation and growing up knowing adults who had worked for civil rights and equal opportunities for African Americans was part of what made me understand that many kids in my community and around the world were still treated differently because of the color of their skin.
My mothers work on behalf of girls and women, first in Arkansas and later around the world, helped me understand how being born a girl is often seen as a reason to deny someone the right to go to school or make her own decisions, or even about who or when to marry.
One of the unique things about SEWA [Self-Employed Women's Association] is that it brings together Muslim and Hindu women in a part of the world where fighting between people from different religious backgrounds has cost countless lives, both between countries and within India.
Women from all different backgrounds told us how they'd learned how much more they had in common than they'd first thought because of their different religions. Their support for each other gave them the confidence to stand up to bullying and harassment, and the relationships they'd built helped prevent violence between Hindus and Muslims, because they saw each other as friends and real people, not only as representatives of different religions. ~ Chelsea Clinton

His background and knowledge can't be transplanted overnight, ... I'd make a point that unless you sat on the throne, you don't know what it's like to be king. In reality there are a lot of things that you do and people you influence that other people don't see and that impact is there for the city. ~ Jeri Ryan

So many young decorators are trying to reinvent the wheel, and the results are sometimes very dubious. They're striving to do things that have never been done before. Quite often it is done without authority, without knowledge, and without a background in taste. They need to be educated about the past, and they need a richer vocabulary. ~ Albert Hadley

I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good. ~ Sarah Vowell

I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start. ~ Ina Garten

Anorexia and bulimia seem to be getting much more common in boys, men, and women of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds; they are also becoming more common in racial groups previously thought to be impervious to the problem. ~ Marya Hornbacher

I bring my classical training - some of it, but not all of it - and also my background and culture, to spirituals. And I try to leave room for that unpredictable factor, where the feeling of the song is allowed to come through. The same ethos can be applied to singing Mozart, or Schubert, or Bach. It's not just about what's on the page. ~ Kathleen Battle

Barbara did the selecting and that's probably the most brilliant thing was she put together a group of women, different backgrounds, different experiences. ~ Star Jones

I didn't have a normal background - I was completely demented from a very early age! ~ Bill Paxton

Later in the fifties I got involved in kinetic studies using my long forgotten math background. ~ William Standish Knowles

I think it's awesome to see people of all different ages from all kinds of backgrounds come together for the love of music. ~ Miranda Lambert

Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for. ~ Umberto Eco

And to improve access to the UK publishing industry - I'm hoping to set up an internship or work experience for someone from a low-income background, as soon as we have the funds. While we don't have the funds, we won't have an intern. ~ Deborah Smith

Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds. ~ Will Hermes

I believe it is the flaws that make us interesting, our backgrounds, the hardships. ~ Jane Green

Coming from an African background, obviously the foundation of the family home is education, probably because my parents had to work a lot harder for everything that they've got in this country. ~ Tinie Tempah

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

In a large congregation, while there is a wide diversification of interest, it is also true that there are only a few basic human problems. It must also be taken into consideration that people are people regardless of who they are or what their backgrounds may be. There are certain deep universal appeals to human interest and to these human nature always responds. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Make sure that every person, of whatever background, can find in you a welcoming heart. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed. ~ Eric Ries

I dream of a world where people from different backgrounds are praying and working for the flourishment of communities different from them, and I find my sustenance not only in these stories in scripture, but in stories of human existence also - the story of the Bosnian Muslim man who took to a Serbian couple with a new baby a liter of milk every day during that horrible struggle in the former Yugoslavia, because he said even if our tribes, our nations, are at war with each other, there is something deeply human about me wishing that your baby survives and is secure. ~ Eboo Patel

Suppose I try to say the US carries out terror, in fact it's one of the leading terrorist states in the world. You can't say that between commercials. People rightly want to know what do you mean. They've never heard that before. Then you have to explain. You have to give background. That's exactly what's cut out. ~ Noam Chomsky

We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars. ~ Bill Bruford

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story. ~ Lynn Abbey

Sure, it's fun to chat with people with interesting backgrounds who seem to have a passion for your company. But a job interview is not a friendly chat. You need to determine whether candidates, can they really do the job. So ask them to prove it. ~ Kathryn Minshew

Equality over stereotype. In our field, we deal with all kinds of people from different backgrounds, races, and religions. There is no such thing as normal in our job. And the sad truth is that it's easy to place a stereotype on a person you don't know. One look at a person is all it takes for our minds to be made up on the type of person we think they are. ~ Belle Aurora

Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life. ~ Russell Baker

But by providing the background picture - the universal situational awareness that we desire - by showing the anomalies, the Space-Based Radar will change the nature of how we do our analysis and our intelligence. ~ Stephen Cambone

Those subject to capital punishment are real human beings, with their own backgrounds and narratives. By contrast, those whose lives are or might be saved by virtue of capital punishment are mere 'statistical people.' They are both nameless and faceless, and their deaths are far less likely to be considered in moral deliberations. ~ Cass Sunstein

The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. ~ George Orwell

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen. ~ Anthony Hopkins

We need to ban assault weapons. We need to ban the high-capacity clips and magazines. We need serious background information, system upgrade. ~ Michael Nutter

To me Art's subject is the human clay, / And landscape but a background to a torso; / All Cezanne's apples I would give away / For one small Goya or a Daumier. ~ W. H. Auden

Axl and I came from completely different backgrounds. Because of that we made an interesting pair trying to figure each other out. ~ Slash

Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can teach them skills - accounting and what have you - but you can't teach them management. ~ Peter Drucker

With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology. ~ Alan Lightman

I've realized that what you think of when you make a 'big movie,' if it's actually a green screen movie, it's like doing independent New York theater because you don't have any backgrounds or props. So it's kind of like making the lowest budgeted film you could possibly imagine, plus $100 million. ~ Emile Hirsch

We played more rock music when we were writing the script. 'Renegade'. All of the Styx songs. All of the old '70's and '80's music, that's the stuff that's pounding in the background while we were doing this stuff. It's a part of those movies. ~ Todd Farmer

Winnipeg has the largest collection of Inuit art in the world, I believe. They can be quite simple in a great way and often have sparse backgrounds and isolated characters. They often have a really great look to them. ~ Marcel Dzama

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. ~ Li-Young Lee

The miracle of unity is being granted to us as we pray and work for it in the Lord's way. Our hearts will be knit together in unity. God has promised that blessing to His faithful Saints whatever their differences in background and whatever conflict rages around them. ~ Henry B. Eyring

I welcome anyone that wants to come into the WWE and try it, because, I was the type of person that was not welcome with open arms. People didn't want me to come in because I was from a Reality background. But I'm the first person that says, bring anybody in. ~ The Miz

While Jesus is saving, I'm spending all my daysin backgrounds and landscapes with the languages of saints.While people are spinning like toys on Christmas day,I'm inside a still life with the other absentee. ~ St. Vincent

It will not just be conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats, people of faith or unbelievers that restore America. It will be individuals from all walks of life, all backgrounds, and all political persuasions who love liberty enough to fight to maintain it. ~ Chuck Baldwin

What I'm saying, Doctor, is that I don't seem to stick my dick up these girls, as much as I stick it up their backgrounds - as though through fucking I will discover America. ~ Philip Roth

A generation earlier, I think that somebody from my background probably would not have felt fully comfortable at a college like Princeton. But, by the time I graduated from high school, things had changed. ~ Samuel Alito

Like many of the kids I write about, I once was a runaway myself - and a few (but not all) of the other writers in the series also come from troubled backgrounds. That early experience influences my fiction, no doubt, but I don't think it's necessary to come from such a background in order to write a good Bordertown tale. To me, "running away to Bordertown" is as much a metaphorical act as an actual one. These tales aren't just for kids who have literally run away from home, but also for every kid, every person, who "runs away" from a difficult or constrictive past to build a different kind of life in some new place. Some of us "run away" to college . . . or we "run away" to a distant city or state . . . or we "run away" from a safe, secure career path to follow our passions or artistic muse. We "run away" from places we don't belong, or from families we have never fit into. We "run away" to find ourselves, or to find others like ourselves, or to find a place where we finally truly belong. And that kind of "running away from home" - the everyday, metaphorical kind - can be just as hard, lonely, and disorienting as crossing the Nevernever to Bordertown . . . particularly when you're in your teens, or early twenties, and your resources (both inner and outer) are still limited. I want to tell stories for young people who are making that journey, or contemplating making that journey. Stories in which friendship, community, and art is the "magic" that lights the way.

(s ~ Terri Windling

My husband, a.k.a. Swede, and I both come from athletic backgrounds, so once we identified the goal - get book published - we attacked it. At any given time, I would have my writing out in 25 various forms - either contests, mentoring critiques, agent/publisher queries, etc. ~ Kresley Cole

For moving would never have been enough; he sees that now. It would have been the same anywhere. Children of Mixed Backgrounds Often Struggle to Find Their Place. ~ Celeste Ng

MOST OF THE NATIONS OF the Middle East can be divided into those with long histories and no oil, and those that have lots of oil and very little history. With a few notable exceptions, both groups share a common feature: they were cobbled together by outsiders. The borders of the modern Middle East were drawn by Europeans after the First World War with no regard for the interests or backgrounds of the people who inhabited it. ~ Richard Engel

I have written millions of words about contemporary England - in journalism. Why don't I take it as the background for a novel? I may do one day. But the simple answer is that it does not excite the novelistic part of my brain; it does not fire it up. ~ Sebastian Faulks

Someone who'll bring some normalcy into my life and help me stay in touch with reality. That is something I'm curious about. There are so many actors who are married to people from non-film backgrounds, and their marriages are successful. I'm tired of dating actresses. ~ Shahid Kapoor

The business of the advertiser is to see that we go about our business with some magic spell or tune or slogan throbbing quietly in the background of our minds. ~ Marshall McLuhan

In my platoon, we came from different parts of the country, with different backgrounds, different religious beliefs, different political beliefs-and yet we all put those differences aside. Fundamentally, I believe that's what the American people expect of Congress as well. We all ought to be able to come together in Washington and do what's best for our America. ~ Seth Moulton

As the nation watches, Democrats and Republicans should reflect the interspersed character of America itself. Perhaps, by sitting with each other for one night, we will begin to rekindle that common spark that brought us here from 50 different states and widely diverging backgrounds to serve the public good. ~ Mark Udall