Kristian Bush Quotes

I think of myself as a Hollywood hillbilly, but I'm sick of all these questions people ask about Alabama. 'Do you have an outhouse?' 'Is there a lot of inbreeding in your family?' They think all Southerners don't have computers and TV sets and that we're all still living in 1862.

Some of you think an Indian is like a wild animal. This is a great mistake.

I hope we can dismantle the idea that the entire south is sitting on our porches spitting tobacco and hating gay people.

If you're taught to hate and fear a people or a country, and it works, it's because of your ignorance of that country. You have no contact with it, nor do you know what you're hating and fearing.

There's no religion in this country that is more misunderstood, mis-categorized, and misidentified than Islam.

Because I'm from North Carolina, you think I'm the Andy Griffith show, or something?

Everyone thinks that just because you have a Scouse accent, then you must be 'on the rob'.

People expect me to be stupid. I'm not saying I'm Stephen Fry, but it is amazing the perception people have.

You tend to be afraid when someone seems foreign to you. But if you aren't careful, that can lead to bigotry.

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.

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

Aversion toward the blind exists for the same reason that most prejudices exist: lack of knowledge. Ignorance is a powerful generator of fear. And fear slides easily into aggression and contempt.

I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I.

I am concerned if 25 percent of Americans think that President Obama is a Muslim. I mean, it's obviously a lack of knowledge. But also, it's for the Muslims as well, you know, because a small numbers of Muslims have really painted a very negative image of Islam.

Americans know as much about Canada as straight people do about gays. Americans arrive at the border with skis in July, and straight people think that being gay is just a phase. A very long phase.

Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.

The absolute basis of all prejudice is ignorance and generalization.

Ignorance is the parent of fear.

There are no worse cliches than southern cliches. They make my skin crawl.

I like the South: Southern literature and that relationship between grotesqueness and living below the Mason-Dixon line. But I also understand that people view it as a limitation - as an actor and as a person - perceptions that are really wrong: that you are ignorant and possibly illiterate, or that it's cute.

The root cause of xenophobia in Russia is not religious differences between Muslims and Christians. Nor is it crime. The root cause is the terrible education that children acquire on the street, at school, and at home.

People have said, 'Oh, but you don't look like you're from Manchester.' And I always want to ask, 'What the hell does someone from Manchester look like?'

I've had tweets questioning whether I really did go to university because surely I would have lost my accent if I did; a letter suggesting, very politely, that I get correction therapy; and an email saying I should get back to my council estate and leave the serious work to the clever folk.

When we were getting married the Hindu way in Arrah, we had an old guest who asked my wife what her 'good name' was. I think she'd heard that I had married a Muslim. When my wife said, 'Mona Ahmed Ali,' the lady looked at me and exclaimed, 'Oh, so you've married a terrorist.'

Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.