Anna Quindlen Quotes

People are just afraid of things too much … Sure, evil exists, extremism exists. Somebody could commit a hate crime and hurt me. But they could do the same just because I'm black. They could do the same just because I'm American.

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.

I mean, what is racism? Racism is a projection of our own fears onto another person. What is sexism? It's our own vulnerability about our potency and masculinity projected as our need to subjugate another person, you know? Fascism, the same thing: People are trying to untidy our state, so I legislate as a way of controlling my environment.

I think, we all learned that when we are afraid it's easy to want to blame, and the people we want to blame are the people who don't look like us.

Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons - but they're not out there.

Those goddamn coons. They drive up and down Lake Shore Drive in front of my house. I hate them. I’m scared of them, and I think I’ll move to Switzerland where there just aren’t any.

We are not born knowing how to hate; we are taught how to hate.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they're so visible. They're out in the open. When they're visible, it's a lot easier to deal with them.

I can very much look into the camera and say, 'I believe Donald Trump is a racist.' You don't get to make textbook racist remarks for a year and not be a racist. You don't get to make textbook sexist remarks for a year and not be a misogynist.

Often in red states you find racism, and where you find racism, you also find sexism.

There's still a really divisive residue in our nation that's called racism and prejudice and oppression and sexism.

I don't think I'm a bigot or a racist. But I have a truck, a Blazer. I drink beer. There are some women I do hate.

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

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

Courage comes by being brave; fear comes by holding back.

When thinking won't cure fear, action will.

You can't do anything as long as you are afraid of what might happen. Fear clouds opportunities, erases possibilities, and limits the ability to move beyond the place in which the mind is stuck. No matter how difficult we think the problem is, we must muster up the courage to face it.

Courage leads to heaven; fear leads to death.

I believe there is no other difference between those who are called courageous and those who are branded craven than that the second are fearful before the danger and the first after it. No one can be much frightened, certainly, during a period of great and immanent peril -- the mind is too much concentrated on the thing itself, and on the actions necessary to meet or avoid it. The coward is a coward, then, because he has brought his fear with him; persons we think cowardly will sometimes amaze us by their bravery, if they have had no forewarning of their danger.

My wife and I went to jail in Selma. The difference when I was back there recently? White folks? No. Black folks who were not scared. I was behind the president this time. When I was a little boy and ran around with trifling dudes, I was the only one scared of dogs. And I was bitten 14 times! Dogs smell scared. And that's the same thing with people: 50 years ago they smelled fear. There was no fear this time.

Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?

It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, - always do what you are afraid to do.

When we look at that jingoism and the sexism and the racism and the homophobia, that's not who we are, and that's not the country that I want my daughter to grow up in.

I have lived with a lot of racism in Spain. Unfortunately, I have had to learn to deal with it.

There's got to be a zero tolerance to racism, anti-Semitism, any form of division and intolerance.