"We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically."

- Shirley Chisholm, 1 st Black Woman elected to Congress & 1st Black person to seek a major Party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency

“If we can find constructive ways for people to work together, learn together, talk together, be together, that’s the best shot we’ve got to avoid some of the horrible problems we see in the rest of the world, to avoid some of the difficult problems we’ve had in our own history, and to make progress on the problems that we have here today.”

- President William Jefferson Clinton,
December 3, 1997

"Civilization is a method of living and an attitude of equal respect for all people."

- Jane Addams

“It is not the strongest of the species nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change that survives.”

- Charles Darwin,
Survival of the fittest

"Real diversity, which includes a strong sense of unity, will never become a reality until each of us, on a daily basis, look for ways to find strength in differences. Biology teaches this law. A good university learns and lives by it.”

- Dr. Walter Wendler, Chancellor, Southern Illinois University Carbondale