Janet Reno Quotes

I suspect that it would be impossible to arrange an affirmative action program in a racially neutral way and have it successful. To ask that this be so is to demand the impossible.

I champion sensibly designed racial affirmative action, not because I have benefited from it personally - though I have. I support it because, on balance, it is conducive to the public good.

There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.

I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it.

Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place.

The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.

Where the effects of past discrimination persist, society has an obligation to take positive steps to overcome the legacy of injustice. Judiciously administered affirmative action programs in education and employment can be important expressions of the drive for solidarity and participation that is at the heart of true justice. Social harm calls for social relief.

Affirmative action is the majority’s constitutional prerogative, through the use of the democratic process—and a means of taking responsibility for the community’s past wrongdoing.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

Affirmative action is something that I think is very crucial and necessary.

Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.

You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.

I don't want affirmative action - too much affirmative, not enough action.

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach.

Republicans can be a funny bunch. They're against affirmative action, but they always seem to be able to find people of color to fill a slot just when they're most needed.

What is so remarkable about the success of affirmative action is that it has been accomplished despite the Justice Department and the policies of the federal government.

Affirmative action is under attack today, not because it has failed, but because it succeeded.

It is the policy of the state [of New York] that the American ideal of equality of opportunity requires that students ... be admitted to educational institutions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, or national origin.

The only way you get to the goal of color blindness is to be color conscious along the way.

I am working for the time when unqualified Blacks, Browns and women join the unqualified men in running our government.

Equal opportunity for all, special privilege for none.

Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability

We suspect that 25 years from now the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.