I believe we are being dishonest with language minority groups if we tell them they can take full part in American life without learning the English language.

In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance.

The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, I have failed three times, and what happens when he says, I am a failure.

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.

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.

Animals struggle with each other for food or for leadership, but they do not, like human beings, struggle with each other for thatthat stands for food or leadership: such things as our paper symbols of wealth (money, bonds, titles), badges of rank to wear on our clothes, or low-number license plates, supposed by some people to stand for social precedence. For animals the relationship in which one thing stands for something else does not appear to exist except in very rudimentary form.