Community Pressure Quotes

Our community is like many around the country that have, as the gentleman from New York referenced, sophisticated planning and zoning regulations. These are elements that are developed as a result of local community pressure to balance interests.

The Muslim community here does feel under siege.

I say, 'I'm bi, my love knows no gender,' and the straight community says, 'Oh right, that's just a cover-up - you're gay!' And the gay community says, 'Yeah right, that's just a cover-up - you're gay.' They both want to push me gay.

Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one's self behind a mask.

Perhaps it's because a writer lives in Brooklyn that he'd want to get away from it. It can be very sustaining, this community of writers - sometimes it's the feeling of many hands giving you a boost. But all that identical ambition can be choking, too. The many hands slide up to your throat.

When Chinese get together - what's buried stays buried. We don't even discuss our embarrassing early days struggling in Chicago.

You were not supposed to show off in Negroland because you are supposed to be perfectly decorous and well behaved. You were also not supposed to tell any stories that reflected badly on the group because that reflected badly on the race. I use past tense, but it still feels like present tense.

Whenever I've tried to ingratiate myself to an existing community, I tend to give too much, to become whatever it is they want me to be. It's something I do automatically - I've learnt to immediately adapt.

I think riots happen when communities are under pressure for long periods of time. That's not a mistake.

I think it's really important that you don't get caught up in the way the filmmaking community isolates you and the way your life ends up being.

I worry that there are attempts to push faith out of the public space. Clearly it happens at a level of local power.

If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.

I know some women's rights activists have seen so much abuse that they can't stand men, but I have a sense of empathy with the men. Without excusing the abuse they are capable of, many of them are trapped within these communities and bound by expectations they didn't necessarily ask for.

I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals.

I think it is vital to fight to do something you want to do despite not gaining your community's or your friends' approval.

All the time, there was the weight of my community's expectations on my shoulders.

I was born in a mining village, and you either played football or played football. If you didn't play, there was something wrong with you.

I was taught you don't tell your secrets to strangers - certainly not secrets that expose error, weakness, failure. My generation, like its predecessors, was taught that since our achievements received little notice or credit from white America, we were not to discuss our faults, lapses, or uncertainties in public.

I know intimately the struggle of trying to live your life and be yourself while feeling the pressure of an entire community on your shoulders.

In the Big City, different feels good, like blazing a trail. In a small town, though, different can feel like trying real hard to look special. Or even like rubbing your neighbor's nose in your success.

People don't like talking about it, but if you're Spanish, you feel a weight.

When you live in a community where people know you, it makes you want to be good and decent. It's a strong influence.

I grew up in a predominantly Asian and Mexican community, and because I did breakdance and poplock and all that, I did get a lot of criticism: 'You're Mexican, why are you doing that?'

The individualism of the Arab has been erased from this society.

That there are a lot of women in the United States who are not feminists is not surprising. To be a feminist you have to believe in your equality and rights, which can make your life unpleasant and dangerous if you live in a marriage, a family, a community, a church, a state, that does not agree.