Josephine Baker Quotes

I ran away from St. Louis, and then I ran away from the United States, because of that terror of discrimination.

The two things I feared as a boy most were rattlesnakes and white people.

It's not anthrax or terrorism or AIDS that is the worst ill in our world: The most horrible disease in the world is hate.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily.

Rising anti-Semitism is rarely the lone or the last expression of intolerance in a society.

While I've been in Congress, I've never experienced a whiff of anti-Semitism. In my life, I have experienced very little.

We may be more sophisticated in how we hide it, but there are still so many phobias in this world, whether it's Islamophobia, xenophobia or homophobia. I've been trying to do things that expose and help teach and draw attention to all of the 'isms' and how we do or don't deal with them in our world.

Hatred, racism, and extremism have no place in this country.

The biggest challenge or biggest crisis knocking on the doors of humankind is fear and intolerance.

I've known that people were racist and misogynistic and homophobic since I was very little.

We must stand up to anti-Semitism at home and abroad.

There's a lot of hate in the world.

Exactly Straight women who surround themselves only with gay men or white people who refuse any other race into their circles are unhealthy and it has more to do with one's individual fear and individual closets.

I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward - well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.

Everybody's scared for their ass. There aren't too many people ready to die for racism. They'll kill for racism but they won't die for racism.

I grew up in the Deep South, where sexism, racism, and homophobia were and still are alive and well. I have early, early memories of words and actions of this type being very painful.

It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice.

Intolerance has been the curse of our country.

I think all Nazis didn't see themselves as bad people. I've never met a racist yet who thought he was a racist. Or an anti-Semite who thought they were anti-Semitic.

I have never been on the receiving end of a hate crime, or even a disparaging remark to my face.

In all its myriad manifestations, the language of anti-Semitism through the ages is a dictionary of non-sequiturs and antonyms, a thesaurus of illogic and inconsistency.

I couldn't join a party that, frankly, tolerates members who are bigots for one thing, homophobes, racists.

You've got to be taught to hate and fear.

You know, people do call it homophobia, and even that term alone is interesting to me. Because I don't even know how they call it homophobia, because that's a fear of the same. It's more heterophobia. It's a fear of something different from yourself.