Bigotry Quotes

“It is the philosophers, theologians, and evangelists who are said to be filled with pride and bigotry due to the strong convictions that they represent. On the contrary, teachings can be either taken or dismissed; whereas voting is the only thing the average person can do to force everyone to live how they would prefer. A simple vote is among the largest yet most acceptable forms of bigotry, and that is because people play the card only when they feel that in doing so it conveniences themselves.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Antisemitism is unique among religious hatreds. It is a racist conspiracy theory fashioned for the needs of messianic and brutal rulers, as dictators from the Tsars to the Islamists via the Nazis have shown. Many other alleged religious 'hatreds' are not hatreds in the true sense. If I criticise Islamic, Orthodox Jewish or Catholic attitudes towards women, for instance, and I'm accused of being a bigot, I shrug and say it is not bigoted to oppose bigotry.”
― Nick Cohen

“London is one of the world's centres of Arab journalism and political activism. The failure of left and right, the establishment and its opposition, to mount principled arguments against clerical reaction has had global ramifications. Ideas minted in Britain – the notion that it is bigoted to oppose bigotry; 'Islamophobic' to oppose clerics whose first desire is to oppress Muslims – swirl out through the press and the net to lands where they can do real harm.”
― Nick Cohen

“There is a wicked and pervading arrogance loose on the earth, like a rabid beast, an overdog. Does it run, does it slouch, does its name have a number? The beast preaches contempt, for that's what arrogance says: that nothing is real but itself, and the bone and blood of another's being are insubstantial as breath.”
― Kelly Cherry, The Exiled Heart: A Meditative Autobiography

“I was to grow used to hearing, around New York, the annoying way in which people would say: 'Edward Said, such a suave and articulate and witty man,' with the unspoken suffix 'for a Palestinian.' It irritated him, too, naturally enough, but in my private opinion it strengthened him in his determination tobean ambassador or spokesman for those who lived in camps or under occupation (or both). He almost overdid the ambassadorial aspect if you ask me, being always just too faultlessly dressed and spiffily turned out. Fools often contrasted this attention to histenuewith his membership of the Palestine National Council, the then-parliament-in-exile of the people without a land. In fact, his taking part in this rather shambolic assembly was a kind ofnoblesse oblige:an assurance to hislandsmen(and also to himself) that he had not allowed and never would allow himself to forget their plight. The downside of thisnoblessewas only to strike me much later on.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage...

As chairman emeritus of the extreme right-wing National Organization for Marriage”
― Orson Scott Card

“When you were talking about the caste system, I was thinking about how Mexicans still have to come to terms with this in our own culture. We spoke earlier about the castas paintings that were made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Mexico. The Spanish, establishing a form of racial apartheid, delineate the fifty-three categories of racial mixtures between Africans, Indians, and the Spanish. And they have names, like tiente en el aire, which means stain in the air; and salta otras, which means jump back; or mulatto, a word that comes from mula, the unnatural mating between the horse and the donkey. “Sambo” is now a racial epithet in the US, but it was first used as one of the fifty-three racial categories in the castas paintings.”
― Amalia Mesa-Bains, Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism

“Language is power that gets abused all the time, Robin, but we've got real enemies out there somewhere and until they're out of the picture, I won't get knotted up over people who don't get all the words right. It's a waste of energy.”
― Tim Eldred, Grease Monkey

“Secularism is not a rejection of religion, secularism is inoculation against fundamentalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“To be treated as a human being,
One must behave as human being.
Faith, intellect, both are poison,
If the heart remains ever so mean.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion

“Till you cut ties to all authoritarianism, you'll never sense the spark of holiness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“I'll tell you plainly - I don't believe in a supreme being, but if you do, and your belief helps you be a better human, I'll fight for your belief till my last breath. But if your belief is your excuse for intolerance and fanaticism, then you're my child, and I am your judgment.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Defend principle, not prejudice.
Support reformation, not rigidity.
Be responsible, not reckless.
Support correction, not conformity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Civil Sanity
(Sonnet 1631)

You know what the problem is!

We question love
more than we question hate.
We question humility
more than we question arrogance.

We question benevolence
more than we question biases.
We question integrity
more than we question deceit.

We question curiosity
more than we question prejudice.
We question character
more than we question cowardice.

Problem is, we question humanity
more than we question inhumanity.
Grow out of such prehistoric normalcy,
and the world will encounter civil sanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Burn my books, and go lift the world!
Let me live in your blood, not in books.
Fetch your nerves and wield your backbone,
You are the cure to the paradigm of crooks.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Istanbul to Alpha Centauri,
Intolerance is not civility.
If you can't tell faith from hate,
You are the posterape of infidelity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“If you can't tell faith from hate, you are the posterape of infidelity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Contaminate not the sweetness of soul,
with foul stench of segregated psyche.
Better stand civilized, without roots,
than be sentenced to inherited slavery.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations

“Better kind than correct,
Better idiot than arrogant.
Better ignorant than bigoted,
Better exploited than indifferent.

Better broke than bent,
Better naive than narcissist.
Better mistaken than mindless,
Better broken than a cheat.

Better wrong than cruel,
Better ridiculed than rigid.
Better shattered than shallow,
Better ignited than idjit.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Better kind than correct,
Better idiot than arrogant.
Better ignorant than bigoted,
Better exploited than indifferent.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“It therefore represented a double gain: getting rid of the Jews in Europe, and at the same time fulfilling the divine scheme in which the Second Coming was to be precipitated by the return of the Jews to Palestine (and their subsequent conversion to Christianity or their roasting in Hell should they refuse).”
― Ilan Pappé, Ten Myths About Israel

“Tierratitan, Sonnet

I only have one advice for you,
own your life, from head to toe -
unapologetically alive and original,
not a carbon copy, with second hand woe.

Civilization is not a conjuring trick,
Civilization is a long labor of life.
You don't figure out everything overnight,
You figure out things over time.

Sweet dreams are made of sweat-n-dare.
Sweat makes it sweet, dare brings it true.
Sweet society is made of reason-n-care,
When I'm your shelter, my shelter is you.

I be your vision, you be my mission.
Divided we drown, together, Tierratitan.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Sonnet 1412

The Catholic Church is one of the
ghastliest invading forces in history,
alongside the British, French and Spaniards.
But don't confuse the Vatican with Jesus -
Jesus was rejuvenation, Vatican, disaster.

Jesus was a spirit of love and light,
the answer of his time to bigotry.
Yet he ended up as institutional excuse
in new exploits of counterfeit piety.

You say, Jesus died for your sins,
Yet you killed more people in his name.
Vatican is the epitome of unholiness,
Slaves to Vatican are clinically insane.

Not just Vatican, but every religious
institution is a septic tank of prejudice.
Till you cut ties to all authoritarianism,
you'll never sense the spark of holiness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Tolerating intolerance is passive hate.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One

“Ours is an age of reckoning - savages call it wokeness, I call it correctiveness. And it is only through correction that this savage species might, just might, one day become human. It is only through correction we apes might one day usher into the dawn of humanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One

“Propaganda is everywhere - bigoted apes give in to their primitive ancestry and propagate hate and division - I, a civilized ape, refuse my innate primitiveness and choose to propagate love and inclusion. Savages choose tradition, I am human, so I choose transformation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One

“Ours is an age of reckoning - savages call it wokeness, I call it correctiveness. And it is only through correction that this savage species might, just might, one day become human. It is only through correction we apes might one day usher into the dawn of humanity.

As usual, those who are fixed in the ways of the forefathers would instantly react to this as woke propaganda. So be it.

Propaganda is everywhere - bigoted apes give in to their primitive ancestry and propagate hate and division - I, a civilized ape, refuse my innate primitiveness and choose to propagate love and inclusion. Savages choose tradition, I am human, so I choose transformation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One

“Being a believer and being a bigot are two different things.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One

“There's nothing uglier than an ugly mouth, there's nothing filthier than a filthy heart. I have said many a times - extreme logic ruins the sweetness of life, just like extreme of faith ruins all common sense, and facilitates superstition. That's why you gotta be grown up enough to practice the human balance between logic and fiction, even if it means attracting mockery from militant atheists as well as religious fundamentalists.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iman Insaniyat, Mazhab Muhabbat: Pani, Agua, Water, It's All One

“The mission is, not to replace old world mindlessness with new world mindlessness, but to put an end to all forms of brainless authoritarianism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth