Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" It's not my job to worry about how Left, Right will react to something. My job is, am I creating something that connects people? That's my job. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

Related Quotes:

" You have to do what you have to do. I wanted to work. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of being here... and I was gonna do whatever it took to prove that. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I'm a gay, undocumented immigrant; I have to be optimistic. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I am not a lobbyist. I am not a political activist. I am not a leader, as far as I'm concerned. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Everyone has an opinion when it comes to immigration - strong, intense opinions. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I think everybody could agree that our immigration system is broken. We have not told the truth about it. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" While in high school, I worked part time at Subway, then at the front desk of the local YMCA, then at a tennis club, until I landed an unpaid internship at 'The Mountain View Voice,' my hometown newspaper. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" A broken immigration system means broken families and broken lives. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I'm more than willing to go to places and talk to people who believe that I am an illegal alien who deserves to be jailed. I want to look them in the eye and say, 'What makes you think I'm any different from you?' I think for our generation, immigration rights is a civil rights issue. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" In many ways, I think I've always overcompensated. I was always almost too careful, because I knew if anybody ever found any way to doubt my work, then they'd start picking my life apart, too. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I remember the first article I ever wrote, and I saw my name in the paper, and I already knew I was undocumented, and I was thinking: 'How can they now say I don't exist?' "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" As you watch 'Documented' on CNN, I ask you, my fellow Americans: What do you want to do with me? What do you want to do with us? How do you define American? "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" As a gay man, I think the role of culture is central to how you change politics - culture is politics. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" At the end of the day, stories connect us, not politics. And there's so many stories out there waiting to be told. It's just a matter of who's out there listening. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I am more than an immigration activist. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" The film 'Documented,' a project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Define American campaign, is about my families: the family I was blessed to be born into, and the family of friends, mentors and allies that I found when I moved to the United States at 12, a Filipino kid trying to make sense of my new home in America. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I've always really wanted to make a film on what it means to be white in a country that's getting less and less white. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Culture is about humanizing people. You look at the African-American civil rights movement, you look at the LGBT rights movement - the culture changed before the politics did. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I have no control whatsoever on how people perceive me from the Right or the Left. All I have control over is who I say I am. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" My mother made a choice. And when I was younger, I judged her for making that choice. Then I got older and got to be an adult, and I realized that was the ultimate sacrifice that any parent and any mother could possibly make. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I'm not a minority: I'm a majority of one. We all are. To call someone a minority, you give them baggage, of not being full, or not being seen as full. All of us need to be seen as full human beings. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Facebook's privacy policies are confusing to many people, and the company has changed them frequently, almost always allowing more information to be exposed in more ways. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Of all the questions I get asked as an undocumented immigrant in the United States, there are two - asked in various permutations via email, social media or in person - that chill me to the bone: 'Why don't you just make yourself legal?' And: 'Why don't you get in the back of the line?' "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" One day when I was 16, I rode my bike to the nearby DMV office to get my driver's permit. Some of my friends already had their licenses, so I figured it was time. But when I handed the clerk my green card as proof of U.S. residency, she flipped it around, examining it. 'This is fake,' she whispered. 'Don't come back here again.' "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I traffic in empathy. I try to be vulnerable with people so they can be vulnerable back. I've always been searching for empathy in other people. It's when I feel most not alone. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" I can't marry my way into citizenship like straight people can. I can get married in the state of New York where I live, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government, which hands out visas, won't recognize my marriage. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak. "

Jose Antonio Vargas

" Technology and the Internet are not just changing politics here in the U.S. It's also happening abroad. In the Philippines, where I grew up, grassroots organizers used text messaging to help overthrow a president. "

Jose Antonio Vargas