Top 15 Julián Castro Quotes

Embrace your own unlikely journey.

he (Barack Obama) said, in Spanish that was pretty damn good, "Julián ha vivido el Sueño Americano." Julián has lived the American dream.

Teaching is one of the most creative and exhausting jobs I have ever had. Clever political adversaries, irate constituents, and elbow-throwing litigators were never as tough to handle as those students were on a daily basis.

One of the most interesting classes I took, "Europe and the Americas," detailed the systematic and brutally efficient decimation of indigenous peoples and cultures. One of the required books, I, Rigoberta Menchú, recounted the struggle of indigenous Guatemalans. Later on, in "Imagining the Holocaust," I heard the horrific account of what happened to Jews during World War II. At Stanford I was forced to pull back from my tight community and understand how a common thread ran through so many other cultures around the world where people had to fight for their rights.

I realized that I would be much better off just being myself around people. That way I'd attract friends who liked the real me, not some person I was trying to be.

This inequity in our country's education system has never stopped seeming like one of our most chronic problems.

College is fantastic for a variety of reasons, but that opportunity to bond with people of very different backgrounds, to pull knowledge-big and small-from such a diverse pool, is invaluable, especially in the formative years.

As a Mexican American, I had a common history with many of the families seeking asylum. The issue of immigration is a complicated and ever-evolving one, but so many folks forget that their own lineage can be traced to another land, another nation, to a moment when their family's survival depended on the empathy and acceptance of strangers. It's no secret that most of us came here because America represented a land of expanding opportunities, a place where one could reach previously unimaginable heights of success through hard work. Times and circumstances change, I realize. But while it's easy to talk about the American dream, every once in a while we need to wake up and ensure that it is not becoming obsolete.

we, as Americans, are more alike than different.

What I believe is that our diversity in this country makes us strong, that we can harness the potential of immigrants, and that, for generations, immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have made this country stronger, have powered our economy, have helped ensure that we continue to move forward as a nation. And that’s going to continue to be the case in the future. And I believe that we should increase the number of people that we’re taking in as refugees and asylees, and that we should put undocumented immigrants who are here in the United States on a pathway to citizenship, as long as they have not committed a serious crime here in the United States. That’s what I would do as president.

my hope is that this president is going to be held to account for what he’s done in terms of violating his oath of office and abusing his power, that he will be impeached, that he will be removed from office. If he is not impeached and removed, he’s going to be defeated on November 3rd, 2020, and that this nightmare, with respect to how he’s treating migrants, will be over.

I mean, that’s the product of a deranged mind right there. What else can we say about that, except that’s an individual with a deranged mind and, obviously, a lot of hate toward these migrants? And, you know, this is the caliber of person that’s sitting in the Oval Office right now. It’s just one more example of why he should not be president of the United States, somebody who is not only hateful, but who is so divorced from reality that he would, on multiple occasions, bring up the idea of shooting people. It makes no sense.

we actually need to create an independent immigration court system, that’s independent from the Department of Justice, with enough judges and support staff to hear these asylum claims and get people an answer in a timely manner. Some people will get asylum. We also know that some people will not. But people should not be waiting years to get an answer on their asylum claim.

he should end this policy. If I were elected president, I would immediately end this “Remain in Mexico” policy. It flies in the face of the United States policy of allowing people who are making a claim of asylum to remain in the United States while their claim is adjudicated.

I did not see that op-ed, but I think that Jorge puts it very well there, that — you know, that this was something that Mexico agreed to. And to me, that was surprising, given the history of López Obrador and what I thought he would stand for and do once he was in office.