Elif Safak Quotes

As you can imagine, there were people who were like, "Why are you being the PC cop?" or, "This is Orwellian to tell people to stop using the word 'illegal' to refer to people." Well, I just want people to think it through.

It's getting funnier because everybody's categories are disintegrating, and the cult of political correctness dictates that we never point out that other people don't make sense.

In fact, it's become politically important to offend people, because we have to fight back against this notion that being offensive should be against the law or something, and that everyone supposedly deserves "respect" for their often dopy views.

I think political correctness is a moving line.

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.

You can't allow the forces of political correction to shut you up. I mean, why are people afraid to say, 'Merry Christmas?' Give me a break. If people don't like it, yeah, they can go do something else.

What's politically correct a lot of times is not funny.

If you're politically correct, chances are you're not coming to one of my shows. I get to go onstage and say things that everybody thinks all the time, but can't say out loud.

I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I've been challenged by so many people, and I don't frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn't have time either.

The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar 'queen,' alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.

We're so politically correct; we take things so seriously.

Obviously I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

I think satire suffered under Obama, but not because of Obama. People are more sensitive now than ever, and strong satirical voices are stifled because of that. I don't think a Clinton presidency would change that.

I think we have gone too far into the PC culture, but there's a limit to how far we can take that.

I'm from the old school - you go where the power is, and you try to make fun of it. When it becomes off limits to say or do certain things without being brutalized or censored or whatever, it's unfortunate.

I think political correctness has taken over this country.

One of my goals in life is to watch political correctness shrivel up and die (as it should be for any true conservative).

Several times I drew a critical cartoon and then, at the last moment, stopped myself from putting it out in print. I thought it would be misunderstood, be a politically incorrect thing to do.

The idea of what's acceptable and what's shocking, that's where I investigate. I mean, you can't be on 'Top Gear,' where your only argument is that it's all just a joke and anyone who takes offence is an example of political correctness gone mad, and then not accept the counterbalance to that.

I'm actually all for political correctness. If you want to work to change the usage of a word that's discriminatory then fine, I'm behind you. But that's a conversation that needs to be had in the culture. You can't just decide that commonly used parts of a language are evil and that the people who didn't get the memo must be bad people.

I'm completely allergic to being politically correct.

I don't try to be politically correct.

It's kinda ridiculous what you can't say nowadays. You really can't say anything you believe! I think it's fricking ridiculous how sensitive everyone is to everything, how much things are frowned upon. How much stuff will cost you nowadays. I think it's fricking ridiculous that we can't - there's certain topics that you can't really say how you feel about.

Popular culture, in all its crudeness, is the output of liberals. It is liberalism that for decades has rejected any protest as 'censorship' or 'McCarthyism.'

There's been an amazing backlash for the last decade in America: political correctness. In many ways, I think that, while we've been remarkably violent in our media, there's been a real schizophrenia. In private, on the Internet, and on public-affairs shows or talk radio, we're way more explicit than we've ever been. But traditional Hollywood has been much more frightened than it ever was in the '70s about presenting things that could be perceived as politically incorrect.