Augusten Burroughs Quotes

If a foreign country doesn't look like a middle-class suburb of Dallas or Detroit, then obviously the natives must be dangerous as well as badly dressed.

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

One always likes to think that other countries are not like one's own.

People say they don't want to call a call-centre in India. Why not? They're doing the same job - you just don't like Indians.

The race thing is sort of a misnomer. It's just the human race, right? That's it. The rest of it, and racism, is socially constructed. Nobody is born racist, no one. What happens is other things that are usually based on power, money, feeling good about yourself, or bad about yourself, those things play into hating other people for whatever reason.

Taking the line of least resistance, we lump the most different people together under the same heading. Taking the line of least resistance, we ascribe to them collective crimes, collective acts and opinions. "The Serbs have massacred…", "The English have devastated…", "The Jews have confiscated…", "The Blacks have torched", "The Arabs refuse…". We blithely express sweeping judgments on whole peoples, calling them "hardworking" and "ingenious", or "lazy", "touchy", "sly", "proud", or "obstinate". And sometimes this ends in bloodshed." – Amin Maalouf "On Identity

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born. We are constantly remarking on the fact that things are done well by people other than ourselves. "The Japanese are a remarkable little people," we say, as if we were doing them a favor. "He is an Arab, but you ought to hear him play the zither." Why "but"?

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

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

There's no such thing as reverse racism.

The world is still very bigoted.

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

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

Everyone looks me and says, 'I'm not going to let that Asian kid embarrass me. I'm going to go at him.' That's how it's been my whole life.

Or a White Englishman would rather smash a White Frenchman than a Jew! Crazy!

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.

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

I am certainly not racist; I even like the British.

You see, that's the problem I have with 'you people.'

You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies.

People aren't born racist.

Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.

We are never racist against somebody who is very far away. I don't know any racism against the Eskimos. To have a racist feeling, there must be an other who is slightly different from us - but is living close to us.

Some ticket buyers think they don't like Jews.

To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.