Eric Hoffer Quotes

Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimise the importance of the individual and maximise the importance of the group. Yet our instinctive stance ought to be one of suspicion towards such endeavours. For individuals are undeniably real. Groups, on the other hand, are assertions of opinion.

It's just amazing that there are so many prejudices even now.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

You see, that's the problem I have with 'you people.'

I think any stereotyping is too much.

We are never racist against somebody who is very far away. I don't know any racism against the Eskimos. To have a racist feeling, there must be an other who is slightly different from us - but is living close to us.

Racism, n. Egotism taking the form of a delusion that one's own race is less depraved and idiotic than the criminal tendencies and gross stupidity exhibited by another.

It is tragic that all Arabs—all Moslems—are stereotyped because of the actions of a few.

Beware of bad Asians

The absolute basis of all prejudice is ignorance and generalization.

When you have demonization of a group of people, it's easy to clump them all together and not understand them.

Generalizing a type of people is really primitive.

Prejudice and discrimination based on our differences is an unfortunate fact of life.

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.

The very nature of the Chinaman holds him back. If his fellow should fall, John thinks it quite proper that he stamp on the underdogs face.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

Ethnic stereotypes are boring and stressful and sometimes criminal. It's just not a good way to think. It's non-thinking. It's stupid and destructive.

I had a white senator call me a rag head, and I had an African-American legislator call me a conservative with a tan.

Races and nations are thus ever ready to believe the worst of one another.

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

It is dangerous when you start calling people from one part of the world terrorists or fanatic, and you reduce them to some abstract notion. If evil has a geographical place, and if the evil has a name, that is the beginning of fascism. Real life is not this way. You have fanatics and narrow-minded people everywhere.

The world is still very bigoted.

Prejudice is a learned trait. You're not born prejudiced; you're taught it.

There was no reason to label us as anti-Semitic.

A child from the age of 2 or 3 absorbs what is in the environment and what generates hatred for anyone perceived to be different.