Richard Belzer Quotes

I think putting labels on people is just an easy way of marketing something you don't understand.

But some people act like they think I live in the jungle someplace.

Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Folks never understand the folks they hate.

Sometimes stereotyping happens not because of any nefarious reasons but rather because people don't know who you are or where you come from, so they go for the broad strokes about you, your culture, your faith, all that.

I find it irresponsible to go, 'She's an actress, what does she know?' That means if you're a dentist, what do you know? If you're a lawyer, what do you know? It's our profession, it's what we do. It's not who we are.

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.

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

When an individual, a sect, a clique or a nation hates and despises another individual, sect, clique or nation, he or they simply do not know the objects of their hatred. Ignorance is at the bottom of it.

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

The will to label will always prevail over what's being labeled, usually at the expense of either truth or understanding.

The police often harass me because they are very ignorant and don’t understand what they hear.

When people don't want to debate you on the smart issues of the day, it's just a lot easier to call you a dumb blonde from Fox.

Everyone that we disagree with is a racist and a homophobe and Islamophobe and a bigot. It's just silly. It's lazy thinking, and I think it gets us nowhere.

Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or...of something else.

Ignorance breeds fear and hatred.

Men remain in ignorance as long as they hate, and they hate unjustly as long as they remain in ignorance.

The blind won't admit that I have eyes in my head, and the deaf say that I'm dumb.

Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand... prejudice, fear and ignorance walk hand-in-hand.

As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may be), there is a degree of vague ill-will towards what is called Thinking. ... I am tempted to believe that much of the mischief thus laid at the door of that poor unknown quantity Thinking is really due to its ubiquitous twin-brother Talking.

it came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize.

The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

Truth is too weak to combat prejudice.

If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside.