Maz Jobrani Quotes

You tend to be afraid when someone seems foreign to you. But if you aren't careful, that can lead to bigotry.

As a child growing up in San Francisco in the 1950s, I sometimes met insults when I ventured outside of Chinatown or my neighborhood. I have even been spat on and threatened with a knife. I could have let my anger fester until it became hate. However, I realized they were isolated incidents, and I simply got on with my life.

Prejudice is a learned trait. You're not born prejudiced; you're taught it.

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.

I do think that the worst thing that a parent can do is to teach children to hate—prejudice.

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.

Anti-Semitism has never gone away; it will always be there because it's a very convenient prejudice. The gene of it, the original DNA, is buried deep within our history. And even within some Jews as well.

This is why we have racism, really: because people are confronting the unknown, and they don't like that.

The people who hate immigrants are people who have never met them!

There's a difference between racism and "I don't know any better. I'm clueless." Racism is like, "I'm trying to make you feel bad." That's racism.

Bigotry is probably the thing I detest most.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

It's just amazing that there are so many prejudices even now.

My tenure at 'The Daily Show' started during the decade after September 11, and fear of Muslims was at an all-time high. Politicians and the media seemed to dial the fright, mistrust, and animosity up to a fever pitch to gain votes and ratings.

I had a white senator call me a rag head, and I had an African-American legislator call me a conservative with a tan.

The world is still very bigoted.

There was no reason to label us as anti-Semitic.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

It is always sad to write about prejudice, but sometimes when we see it being played out in the lives of fictional characters, we can recognize it in our own lives.

Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.

I remember people saying: 'You look funny, your hair is so black, you have a flat nose,' but I didn't think of it being racism, and I still don't. But there was a sense of difference, of being an outsider.

Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.

We have the tendency to condemn what we don't understand.

It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about.

I figure if people don't want to make the distinction between a Muslim and a terrorist, then why should I make a distinction between good scared white people and racists?