Language policing Quotes

Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.

Political correctness is the the inability to state certain truths because they may offend certain people

Political correctness is a bit like a granny, a maiden aunt arriving at a party when everyone's having a good time. And she comes in, they all start sort of buttoning up and becoming self-conscious and behaving properly and then when she leaves, you can have fun again.

America's problem is too much political correctness.

Political correctness is bad.

At its grandest, political correctness is an attempt to accelerate evolution.

Watch me when people say deaf and dumb, or deaf mute, and I give them a look like you might get if you called Denzel Washington the wrong name.

Political Correctness is inverted McCarthyism.

Tom [Hentoff] - it started when he was the editor of the paper at Wesleyan and the - members of the staff. This was the first wave of political correctness. The editors of the staff members came and said he must - he must, from now on, stop using 'freshmen' and - in-as part of the policy of the paper. It had to be 'freshperson.' Therefore, you don't - you're not discriminating against males or females. They were very fervent about that, and he was equally fervent about not politicizing language. So until he left, 'freshmen' stayed.

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.

I like the free-speech stuff, the political-correctness stuff.

Another plague upon the land, as devastating as the locusts God loosed on the Egyptians, is 'Political Correctness.'

DEI is of comparatively recent vintage and the programs are now indelibly associated with racial preferences, oppression hierarchies, ideological indoctrination, and language policing. Those aren’t American values at all.

Political correctness and so many of the political fashions of the day...could only be perpetrated in adolescent minds: minds, that is, that are trained to search out one thing and one thing only...Only an adolescent would find it worthwhile to devote his or her attention chiefly to the hunting of offenses, the possibility of slights, real and imagined.

Political correctness is a concept invented by hard-rightwing forces to defend their right to be racist, to treat women in a degrading way and to be truly vile about gay people. They invent this idea of people who are politically correct, with a rigid, monstrous attitude to life so they can attack. But we have all had to learn to modify our language. That's all part of being a decent human being.

I have always defined political correctness as an elevation of sensitivity over truth.

Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.

Political correctness is neither political nor is it correct. It amounts to social censorship, and the sooner we spit it out, the better.

There is a point where political correctness becomes an acid that erodes freedom.

Political correctness has changed everything. People forget that political correctness used to be called spastic gay talk.

Political correctness is the fascism of the 90's, it is this rigid feeling that you have to keep your ideas and your way of looking at things within very narrow boundaries or else you'll offend someone. Certainly one of the purposes of journalism is to challenge just that way of thinking, and certainly one of the purposes of criticism is to break boundaries, that's also one of the purposes of art.

The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth.

[On political correctness:] Any intended message mattered less than the received message, and every received message could be interpreted in whatever way the receiver wanted.

Political correctness gets in the way of all too many things in this country of ours, I am not a subscriber of political correctness by any means, shape or form.