Maz Jobrani Quotes

To assume that just because of someone's age or gender or whatever, that they don't pose a threat would be wrong.

I don't believe in stereotypes. Most of the time, stereotypes are just that.

As soon as I would say I'm from Boston, people would just say, 'Naaaah!'

Just because you wear a bow tie doesn't mean you're a nerd.

Just because we have exotic last names or darker faces, our politics are assumed to be radical. But that is simply not the case.

I meet a lot of people when I do stand-up in the Middle East, and I don't know any terrorists, yet on TV and in the movies, 9 out of 10 are depicted as terrorists.

I've run into people who say, 'I know what you're like: You're a Boston guy.' That's so weird. This person who doesn't know anything about me thinks they know a lot because of the city I grew up in, which, to me, is a meaningless label. There are all kinds of people from Boston.

It is very easy to make wild generalizations about Islam. All you have to do is read almost any issue of The New Republic and you'll see there the radical evil that's associated with Islam, the Arabs as having a depraved culture, and so forth. These are impossible generalizations to make in the United States about any other religious or ethnic group.

Now, see there. Just because I'm wearing my Super-Dike sweatshirt, you think I'm a lesbian. I guess if I were wearing a string of pearls, you'd think I was an oyster.

I meet people and a lot of times, instead of saying, "Are you from the East Coast?" people just go, "you're from the East Coast, right?", having no reason to have known that. I don't know what that is. Maybe it's just that I'm Jewish.

I'm always surprised on my social accounts that people assume that because you have a job in television you don't have a political opinion, or don't have a family, or don't have an interest in the rest of the country. It's just absolutely shocking to me how closed minded some people are.

The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.

Stereotypes abound when there is distance. They are an invention, a pretense that one knows when the steps that would make real knowing possible cannot be taken or are not allowed.

People who think they know me would be surprised that my whole life doesn't revolve around sex.

Another Thing I'm Sick of Hearing: If I started that gay rights group, I must be gay. So if i start an animal rights group, what does that make me? A giraffe?

Newt Gingrich...is absolutely for bombing Iran and for lowering gas prices. And I've just to say, you can't be for both. They are diametrically opposed.

It is all too easy to draw conclusions and make sweeping judgments about millions of Muslim women based on fleeting television images. That is not right.

You're never going to get beyond other people's preconceptions of what you are and what you're about.

People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it's interesting. It's like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie.

We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view.

The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.

Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbour, but my neighbour. For don't we often make this mistake as regards people who are still alive -- who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture -- almost the précis -- we've made of him in our own minds? And he has to depart from it pretty widely before we even notice the fact.

Didn't need the user icon to know you're white and male.

General notions are generally wrong.

Assume nothing. Inside every dumb blond there may be a very smart brunette.