The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep...

[…] rationalism is a form of intellectual bigotry which, in thinking about reality, tries to take it into account as little as possible.

When you are being judged by someone that has no idea who you are always remember this: Dogs always bark at strangers and usually there is always some wacko neighbor that wants to try out...

The more you put your arm around those that you might naturally look down on, the more you will love yourself. And the more you love yourself, the less need you’ll ever have to find...

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. It is the resistance offered to definite ideas by that vague bulk of people whose ideas are indefinite to excess. Bigotry...

When we think of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings, racial epithets, and “whites only” signs. These images make it easy to forget...

In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite...

[Josiah P. Mendum memorial at Paine Hall][He turned] the strait-laced Boston of sixty years ago [into] the enlightened Hub of today, . . . to ‘destroy bigotry and uproot the evils of superstition.

No. They believe we’re dumb animals. And they won’t contradict their bigotry by listening with their own ears.

Only when we learn to value the differences among us can we achieve the true spirit of humanity.

I hate organized religion. I hate that people use it to justify their crappy, bigoted beliefs.

Those who aren’t caught up into this bigotry, this hatred, those who respect us when they see us. Then you have an obligation also, the good ones. To make sure you say to the others,...

I met two or three men who were very kind to me. There was a magistrate who couldn’t stand priests, and a priest who didn’t have a good word to say for magistrates; and there...

I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this… Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world...

To change undesirable behaviors we see in the world, we must change the thinking that leads to those behaviors.

Parents and schoolteachers counsel black children that, if they ever hope to escape this system and avoid prison time, they must be on their best behavior, raise their arms and spread their legs for the...

One of the biggest contradictions in self-proclaimed open-mindedness is to say that we’re all one but when a true bigot comes around tell him we’re all different. It’s usually the case that neither side is...

Those who claim to be hurt by words must be led to expect nothing as compensation. Otherwise, once they learn they can get something by claiming to be hurt, they will go into the business...

The part of the tradition that I knew best was mostly written (or rewritten for children) in England and northern Europe. The principal characters were men. If the story was heroic, the hero was a...

On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a sponsor and donor of this soon-to-be-opened institution, while an accompanying leaflet has enticing...

Initially, the purveyors of racism need no more than the silent acquiescence of the public … [I]t is never too soon to confront bigotry and racism whenever, wherever, and in whatever form it raises its...

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

People who change their religion should face the death penalty.

trailer trash,” those living in poverty, or the illegal immigrants. They didn’t tell us it was okay to love everybody except for our ex-lovers, our lovers’ ex lovers, or our ex-lovers’ lovers. The mandate was...

I wasn’t a person after all. I was simply this exotic thing for people to observe and investigate, an alien in any environment I was in.

A new civil rights movement cannot be organized around the relics of the earlier system of control if it is to address meaningfully the racial realities of our time. Any racial justice movement, to be...

It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.

The imagination is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma.

Those who believe in their truth — the only ones whose imprint is retained by the memory of men — leave the earth behind them strewn with corpses. Religions number in their ledgers more murders...

However modest one may be in one’s demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the...

Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.

If he is terrorising the terrorists, if he is terrorising America the terrorist […] I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist.

If anyone thinks interracial “anything” is a big deal, they’re probably inbred.

Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity. Two of the biggest proven hoaxes of our...

I know I can’t tell you what it’s like to be gay. But I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity.

What does religious freedom mean if we would use it as a cover for hate and privilege?

Another kind of transcendence myth has been dramatization of human life in terms of conflict and vindication. This focuses upon the situation of oppression and the struggle for liberation. It is a short-circuited transcendence when...

The American people spend thousands of dollars to propagate the doctrines of the fall of man, the creation of the world out of nothing in six days by a personal God, vicarious atonement, absolution from...

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on...

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...

{From Lindsey’s address at the funeral of renowned scientist Luther Burbank. Burbank was one of the most beloved people in the early 20th century due to his countless contributions to humanity, but when, in an...

It’s not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about.

That’s what imperialism is all about, shoving your language, religion, culture, and race down others’ throats and telling them that they’re beneath you – and it’s not unique to the West either.

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects...

As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men...

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called ‘educated’ making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious...

Liberty is no less a blessing because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.

Oh, come on. A vamp marrying a human gets the fanged ones all upset, and Eve made herself look like the ultimate fang-anger to all the humans by putting a ring on one, so what...

In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this...

It was always like this. When you spoke the truth, they hated you. The more you talked about love, the more they hated you.