Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

We are all naturally xenophobic.

Everybody is xenophobic to an extent.

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.

In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that's different.'

I think, we all learned that when we are afraid it's easy to want to blame, and the people we want to blame are the people who don't look like us.

Muslims are like wild dogs. You can't deal with them, you can only kill them.

Devils are worse than Indians.

Demonizing the other does not help our cause and does bad things to us.

The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosives and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own

Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?

It is normal to hate what we fear, and it happens frequently, though not always, that we fear what we hate. I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar.

Those goddamn coons. They drive up and down Lake Shore Drive in front of my house. I hate them. I’m scared of them, and I think I’ll move to Switzerland where there just aren’t any.

You do not trust white people. You have said that. You don't trust Jews. You have said that. You don't trust journalists. You have said that. Well, here I am.

I think there's always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can't feel that they have any hero qualities unless there's someone beneath them.

This is why we have racism, really: because people are confronting the unknown, and they don't like that.

The people who hate immigrants are people who have never met them!

Ignorance breeds fear and hatred.

There will always be people for whom hate is easier when it’s not backed up by anything but fear.

I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.

Whatever is not commonly seen is condemned as alien.

It seems to be part of the human condition to need someone you can look down on. I still don't get that one.

Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.

My tenure at 'The Daily Show' started during the decade after September 11, and fear of Muslims was at an all-time high. Politicians and the media seemed to dial the fright, mistrust, and animosity up to a fever pitch to gain votes and ratings.