Richard Lugar Quotes

We should favor young immigrants with many years of work ahead of them. We should favor immigrants who have demonstrated an ability to learn and work using English, which makes their future success more likely.

If you are going to vote in this country, you should be a citizen. To be a citizen in this country, you should know English.

English is the key to full participation in the opportunities of American life.

I told my nephew that if he wanted to get on in motor racing, the first thing he should do was master English. Thank goodness he now speaks it.

What animates me in politics are the economic issues of opportunity.

Giving people like me a green card, a passport, and a driver's license? That's not going to be the end of the immigration conversation and debate in this country. It's like saying we elected Barack Obama president, so all of the racial problems are done. Right? I mean in some ways, the immigration conversation is just starting. Which is why when we started this campaign, we didn't call it Define Immigrant, we called it Define American. That's the question. That's what's at stake.

Conservatives are better talking about opportunity and growth in the abstract, while liberals talk more about poor people. Right now we [americans] need a good, optimistic, conservative opportunity ideology that is totally geared toward lifting up the poor. That's what I most want to see in candidates.

I have seen people wanting to devote their time & energy to nation building. All they need is an opportunity. 'MyGov' is that opportunity!

Again, something that's very strange and odd, you will find sometimes that immigrants that have been here for many years and already have their citizenship might be the ones against additional immigration. We've seen that also.

My mother, she's the one who's gifted with language. She can speak Japanese, of course, Tagalog, which is a Filipino dialect, Spanish as well as English. And I speak a little bit Japanese because I've had the opportunity to work alongside Japanese people. And a little bit of German, a little bit of Portuguese because of work. A little bit of French because of work. But then, if you asked me to carry-on an everyday conversation, I would fail miserably.

If the white man can come here uneducated and as an immigrant, and within 10 or 15 years set up an industry that provides job opportunities and educational opportunities for black people, then if the black man, the black leadership, who has access to all of this money and has all of these degrees today, can't use his talent and his know-how to set up business opportunities, job opportunities, housing opportunities for the black people the same as the white leaders have done for white people, then these black leaders need to get off the boat.

I see an America where poverty is defeated by opportunity, not enabled by a government check.

[E]very Man who comes among us, and takes up a piece of Land, becomes a Citizen, and by our Constitution has a Voice in Elections, and a share in the Government of the Country.

We should be proud that so many want to come to America, that it is still seen as the land of opportunity. Let's make it a land of legal work, not black-market jobs. Let's make it a land of work, not welfare. Our land should be one of assimilation, not hiding in the shadows.

WOMEN WHO STEPPED UP WERE MEASURED AS CITIZENS OF THE NATION, NOT AS WOMEN...THIS WAS A PEOPLE'S WAR, AND EVERYONE WAS IN IT.

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

The English Language Amendment says above all, 'Let's see to it that our children, our young people, learn English. Let us not deny them the opportunity to participate in American life, so that they can go as far as their dreams and talents can take them.

As a woman finds economic opportunity, even if she's only earning a couple of dollars a day, if she can save it on her phone, she then makes different decisions for her household than her husband might.

We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto.

Microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge, posing an untapped opportunity to create markets, bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves.

If indeed we can create systems that allow individuals to access goods and services like health and housing and energy and water, in a way that they can afford, they'll all have greater choice, greater opportunity, greater dignity.

My English is not very good-looking.

We can only converse if we can speak the same language. So if we are going to build One Nation, we need to start with everyone in Britain knowing how to speak English.

I am proud to stand with hardworking families all over Toledo, Ohio and America who should have the same chance that I did to share in the American dream, which should be big enough for everybody.