Quotes to inspire and reflect

A people that elect corrupt politicians, impostors, thieves and traitors are not victims . . . but accomplices.”—George Orwell, English author and essayist (1903 – 1950), attributed “He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism: ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or any other controlling private power.

No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

Prejudice and self-sufficiency naturally proceed from inexperience of the world and ignorance of mankind.

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.

Real freedom is freedom from fear, and unless you can live free from fear you cannot live a dignified human life.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed-upon myths of its conquerors.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.

The majority has the might—more’s the pity—but it hasn’t the right. . . . The minority is always right.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littlenesses, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family.

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side.

Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

The interaction of disparate cultures, the vehemence of the ideals that led the immigrants here, the opportunity offered by a new life, all gave America a flavor and a character that make it as unmistakable and as remarkable to people today as it was to Alexis de Tocqueville in the early part of the nineteenth century.

That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.

Prejudice is the reason of fools.

No prejudice has even been able to prove its case in the court of reason.

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.

Prejudice is opinion without judgement.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

Our nation is waging a war on a radical network of terrorists—not on a religion, and not a civilization. As we wage this war to defend our principles, we must live up to those principles ourselves. And one of the deepest commitments of America is tolerance. No one should be treated unkindly because of the color of their skin or the content of their creed. No one should be unfairly judged by appearance or ethnic background, or religious faith.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya : ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’

It’s an universal law—intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however often Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.

It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.