Sigmund Freud Quotes

We're a social species, and we want to get along with the people we like and who are like us. That's just good adaptive behaviour. We're more likely to accept something if we hear it from a friend, whereas we're sceptical of people who are not like us - which is what leads to racism, nationalism, sexism and all forms of bigotry.

Primates are hardwired for us/them dichotomies. Our brains detect them in less than 100 milliseconds.

The intolerance of the few, or the risk of it, carries the day against the wider humanity of the many.

Well, I think the worst part about tribalism is its tendency to fundamentalize, and if I can fight fundamentalism in any of its forms I'm happy.

Some social scientists say that in-group/out-group biases are hard-wired into the human brain. Even without overt prejudice, it is cognitively convenient for people to sort items into categories and respond based on what is usually associated with those categories: a form of statistical discrimination, playing the odds.

I have no idea how one stops one group, one race, from hating another. The hatred between human groups has never been cured, except by time.

I do not want to name any individual names, but I felt like when I was working in Hollywood, there were some fellow colleagues of mine who didn't even look me in the eyes because I was Asian.

We are not in a situation where the minorities are demanding something and the majorities are pushing back saying 'We don't want it.'

The key thing about us is that we all belong to multiple tribes. Even if we are predisposed into dividing the world into 'us' and 'them,' it's incredibly easy to manipulate us as to who is an 'us' and who is a 'them' at any given moment.

I have had strangers come up to me and attempt to mimic the Chinese language in a derogatory manner. I have been told countless times that I speak 'good' English. I have been asked why someone like me would be interested in watching NFL football. On any given day, if I walk around with a camera, I will be mistaken for a tourist from Asia.

I think it is inevitable that we make Us/Them distinctions but there's nothing inevitable about who counts as a Them.

The capacity for humans to come up with ever-increasingly granular in-group versus out-group demarcations is truly breathtaking.

We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people.

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and "patriotism" . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals.

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.

Polarization affects families and groups of friends. Its a paralyzing situation. A civil war of opinion.

The great danger... in believing yourself especially chosen is that it becomes easy to view those who are not your people as God's especially unchosen.

Why does he speak of them that way?" The crow-man wanted to know. "They are humans, just like he is." "I don't think he sees them as just like him." Ally explained. "He is foolish then," said Nawat. "There are more raka than Bronaus.

Random, meaningless groups can adopt an us-versus-them mentality.

I think the fact that us as a race still continues to be very tribal and we haven't really moved away from that over hundreds and hundreds of years of experience.

It is natural anywhere that people like their own kind, but it is not necessarily natural that their fondness for their own kind should lead them to the subjection of whole groups of other people not like them.

I don't think I have an unkind word for any.Except Muslims. I've been cross with them since 9/11 2001. I can't remember why but it was something bad.

The Islamophobia phobes, (ph) the writers and the editors and the talking heads who deny an existence of evil while blaming those who speak up. There no difference - different than the apologists for communism. As communism killed millions, they, they denied it.

From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.