Quotes about discrimination
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Judea Pearl photo
Warren Farrell photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Charles Lyell photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Henry Suso photo
Fidel Castro photo

“At Punta del Este a great ideological battle unfolded between the Cuban Revolution and Yankee imperialism. Who did they represent there, for whom did each speak? Cuba represented the people; the United States represented the monopolies. Cuba spoke for America's exploited masses; the United States for the exploiting, oligarchical, and imperialist interests; Cuba for sovereignty; the United States for intervention; Cuba for the nationalization of foreign enterprises; the United States for new investments of foreign capital. Cuba for culture; the United States for ignorance. Cuba for agrarian reform; the United States for great landed estates. Cuba for the industrialization of America; the United States for underdevelopment. Cuba for creative work; the United States for sabotage and counterrevolutionary terror practiced by its agentsthe destruction of sugarcane fields and factories, the bombing by their pirate planes of the labor of a peaceful people. Cuba for the murdered teachers; the United States for the assassins. Cuba for bread; the United States for hunger. Cuba for equality; the United States for privilege and discrimination. Cuba for the truth; the United States for lies. Cuba for liberation; the United States for oppression. Cuba for the bright future of humanity; the United States for the past without hope. Cuba for the heroes who fell at Giron to save the country from foreign domination; the United States for mercenaries and traitors who serve the foreigner against their country. Cuba for peace among peoples; the United States for aggression and war. Cuba for socialism; the United States for capitalism.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

Daniel Dennett photo

“Evolution embodies information in every part of every organism. … This information doesn't have to be copied into the brain at all. It doesn't have to be "represented" in "data structures" in the nervous system. It can be exploited by the nervous system, however, which is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information in the hormonal systems just as it is designed to rely on, or exploit, the information embodied in your limbs and eyes. So there is wisdom, particularly about preferences, embodied in the rest of the body. By using the old bodily systems as a sort of sounding board, or reactive audience, or critic, the central nervous system can be guided — sometimes nudged, sometimes slammed — into wise policies. Put it to the vote of the body, in effect….When all goes well, harmony reigns and the various sources of wisdom in the body cooperate for the benefit of the whole, but we are all too familiar with the conflicts that can provoke the curious outburst "My body has a mind of its own!" Sometimes, apparently, it is tempting to lump together some of the embodied information into a separate mind. Why? Because it is organized in such a way that it can sometimes make independent discriminations, consult preferences, make decisions, enact policies that are in competition with your mind. At such time, the Cartesian perspective of a puppeteer self trying desperately to control an unruly body-puppet is very powerful. Your body can vigorously betray the secrets you are desperately trying to keep — by blushing and trembling or sweating, to mention only the most obvious cases. It can "decide" that in spite of your well-laid plans, right now would be a good time for sex, not intellectual discussion, and then take embarrassing steps in preparation for a coup d'etat. On another occasion, to your even greater chagrin and frustration, it can turn a deaf ear on your own efforts to enlist it for a sexual campaign, forcing you to raise the volume, twirl the dials, try all manner of preposterous cajolings to persuade it.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

James Tod photo

“Those who expect from a people like the Hindus a species of composition of precisely the same character as the historical works of Greece and Rome commit the very gregarious error of overlooking the peculiarities which distinguish the natives of India from all other races, and which strongly discriminate their intellectual productions of every kind from those of the West. Their philosophy, their poetry, their architecture, are marked with traits of originality; and the same may be expected to pervade their history, which, like the arts enumerated, took a character from its intimate association with the religion of the people. It must be recollected, moreover,… that the chronicles of all the polished nations of Europe, were, at a much more recent date, as crude, as wild, and as barren, as those of the early Rajputs.” … “My own animadversions upon the defective condition of the annals of Rajwarra have more than once been checked by a very just remark: ‘When our princes were in exile, driven from hold to hold, and compelled to dwell in the clefts of the mountains, often doubtful whether they would not be forced to abandon the very meal preparing for them, was that a time to think of historical records?’ ”… “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which have happened in Hindustan since Mahmood’s invasion, and the intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able to account for the paucity of its national works on history, without being driven to the improbable conclusion, that the Hindus were ignorant of an art which has been cultivated in other countries from almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, were not only cultivated, but taught and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of their history, the character of their princes and the acts of their reigns?”

James Tod (1782–1835) 1782-1835, English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar

[The fact appears to be that] “After eight centuries of galling subjection to conquerors totally ignorant of the classical language of the Hindus; after every capital city had been repeatedly stormed and sacked by barbarous, bigoted, and exasperated foes; it is too much to expect that the literature of the country should not have sustained, in common with other interests, irretrievable losses.”
James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Routledge and Kegan Paul (London,l829,1957), 2 vols., I quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“I will not fight against it nor discriminate, but if I see two men kissing on the street, I'll beat them up.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Apoio de FHC à união gay causa protestos http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/fsp/cotidian/ff1905200210.htm. Folha de S.Paulo (19 May 2002).

Věra Jourová photo
John Howard photo
Pat Robertson photo
Mordechai Anielewicz photo

“The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don’t adjust! Revolt against the reality!”

Mordechai Anielewicz (1919–1943) Leader of the Jewish Combat Organization

The last letter from Mordecai Anielewicz , April 23 1943, written to Yitzhak Cukierman. [M.Kann], Na oczach swiata, ("In The Eyes of the World"), Zamosc, 1932 [i.e. Warszawa, 1943], pp. 33-34.

Barry Goldwater photo
James Eastland photo
Simone Weil photo
Ai Weiwei photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Our focus on discrimination against women during the past 30 years has blinded us to opportunities for women.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. xxiv.

Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Frances Kellor photo

“Every man lives in his neighborhood, and beyond his home and his job. To most men, except in the largest cities, the municipality is interpreted in terms of his neighborhood. Few men get beyond this except through occasional excursions into the larger world. America is a country of parallel neighborhoods; the native American in one section and the immigrant in another. Americanization is the elimination of the parallel line. So long as the American thinks that a house in his street is too good for his immigrant neighbor and tolerates discriminations in sanitation, housing, and enforcement of municipal laws, he can serve on all Americanization Committees that exist and still fail in his efforts.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)
Context: Every man lives in his neighborhood, and beyond his home and his job. To most men, except in the largest cities, the municipality is interpreted in terms of his neighborhood. Few men get beyond this except through occasional excursions into the larger world. America is a country of parallel neighborhoods; the native American in one section and the immigrant in another. Americanization is the elimination of the parallel line. So long as the American thinks that a house in his street is too good for his immigrant neighbor and tolerates discriminations in sanitation, housing, and enforcement of municipal laws, he can serve on all Americanization Committees that exist and still fail in his efforts. The immigrant neighborhood is often made up of people who have come from one province in the old country. Inevitably the culture of that neighborhood will be that of the old country; its language will persist and its traditions will flourish. It is not that we undervalue these, or desire to discredit them. But separated from the land and surroundings that gave them birth, from the history that cherishes them, they do not remain the strong, beautiful things they were on the other side. These aliens may retain some of the form of culture of the land of their birth long after its spirit has departed or has lost its savor in a new atmosphere. New opportunities, strange conditions, unforeseen adjustments, necessary sacrifices, and forces unseen and not understood affect the immigrant and his life here, and unless this culture is connected and fused with that of the new world, it loses its vitality or becomes corrupt.

Thorbjørn Jagland photo

“I am particularly concerned about the recent allegations of mass persecutions of LGBTI people in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation. Discrimination and violence against LGBTI people is the worst kind of populism. Using minorities as scapegoats is unfortunately a growing trend. It is dangerous to democracy and governments must do all they can to stop it.”

Thorbjørn Jagland (1950) Norwegian politician

The Council of Europe member states have an obligation to protect LGBTI people http://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/the-council-of-europe-member-states-have-an-obligation-to-protect-lgbti-people, DC069(2017), Strasbourg, May 17, 2017.

Joseph Heller photo
Taslima Nasrin photo
Ken Ham photo

“Bible-believing Christians who oppose same-sex marriage are not discriminating against homosexual people—they are taking a stand on the authority of God’s Word. They are applying God’s holy standards—as recorded in the Bible—to correctly identify sin as sin. Homosexual behavior is sin. All sin is evil. People need to understand what sin is, and not justify it and dress it up as something good and acceptable.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"United Methodist Church showing more Support for 'Gay Marriage'" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/08/united-methodist-church-showing-more-support-for-gay-marriage/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 8, 2014)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Jonas Salk photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo

“As Jews presently enjoy a disproportionate share of the wholesale and retail trade, such a balanced distribution can be achieved only by refusing them further trading licenses, until such a time as the other main population groups, such as English- and Afrikaans-speakers, have gained a proportion which (as far as practicable) corresponds to their percentage of the white population. … Of course, the discrimination must disappear as soon as the correct balance (ewewigtige toestand) has been achieved.”

Hendrik Verwoerd (1901–1966) Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 until his assassination in 1966

As editor of Die Transvaler on 1 October 1937, 10 quotes by Hendrik Verwoerd (Politics Web) https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/hendrik-verwoerd-10-quotes-hendrik-verwoerd-politics-web-20-september-2016, sahistory.org.za (20 September 2016)

Edmund White photo

“It seemed strange to me that someone who painted big, scary abstractions should have been so commonsensical in her literary tastes, though later I would discover that twelve-tone composers read Keats just as experimental poets listened to Glenn Miller — few people are avant-garde outside their own domain.I suppose that as Midwesterners, the children of chemical engineers and homemakers, we experienced the arts as so foreign, even so preposterously unreasonable, that once we’d decided to embrace them we did so with lots of conviction and little discrimination. Surely it was no accident that T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, the two great poetic synthesists of our day, the very men who had ransacked all of world culture and could refer in the same poem to the Buddha and to Sophocles or to Confucius and to Jefferson — it was no accident that they were both from the heartland. Public-library intellectuals, magpies of knowledge, like most autodidacts we were incapable of evaluating our sources. As a teen-ager, I tried to write verse like Milton’s; later, I wanted to write novels like Nabokov’s. In a novel I wrote in college, I imitated Evelyn Waugh. If someone had said to me, "But do you, the graceless son of a Cincinnati broker of chemical equipment, do you seriously imagine that you can just write a Renaissance Christian epic or something in the style of a Cambridge-educated Russian aristocrat or of the spokesman of the Bright Young Things of London circa 1925?"”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

if someone had spoken like this to me, I wouldn’t even have understood his point.
My Women.The New Yorker https://archive.is/20121204150452/www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050613fa_fact 6 June 2005
Articles and Interviews

Uhuru Kenyatta photo
Colin Powell photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Isabel II do Reino Unido photo

“A country cannot be defeated politically unless it is defeated culturally. Our alien rulers knew that they could not conquer India without conquering Hinduism - cultural India's name at its deepest and highest, and the principle of its identity, continuity and reawakening. Therefore Hinduism became an object of their special attack. Physical attack was supplemented by ideological attack. They began to interpret for us our history, our religion, our culture and ourselves. We learnt to look at us through their eyes…. The long period created an atmosphere of mental slavery and imitation. It created a class of people Hindu in their names and by birth but anti-Hindu in orientation, sympathy and loyalty. They knew all the bad things and nothing good about Hinduism. Hindu dharma is now being subverted from within. Anti-Hindu Hindus are very important today; they rule the roost; they write our histories, they define our nation; they control the media, the academia, the politics, the higher administration and higher courts. They are now working as clients of those forces who are planning to revive their old Imperialism… During this period our minds became soft. We became escapists; we wanted to avoid conflict at any cost, even conflict and controversy of ideas, even when this controversy was necessary. We developed an escape-route. We called it "synthesis". We said all religions, all scriptures, all prophets preach the same things. It was intellectual surrender, and our enemies saw it that way; they concluded that we are amenable to anything, that we would clutch at any false hope or idea to avoid a struggle, and that we would do nothing to defend ourselves. Therefore, they have become even more aggressive. It also shows that we have lost spiritual discrimination (viveka), and would entertain any falsehood; this is prajñâ-dosha, drishti-dosha, and it cannot be good for our survival in the long run. People first fall into delusion before they fall into misfortune.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Vladimir Putin photo

“If minorities prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that’s the state law… We will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell ‘discrimination.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Huffington Post, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/arnold-steinberg/the-un-speech-president-o_b_8216286.html (30 September 2016)
2016 - 2018

“Theorem I. Any sight of which seeing has not informed me of, is unknown to me. Comments. 1. Sensible knowledge discriminated from intellectual knowledge. 2. The intellectual injury from the privation of any sense.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Part II. Of the Extent of Sensible Knowledge.
The Physiology of the Senses: Or, How and what We See, Hear, Taste, Feel and Smell (1856)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Felix Frankfurter photo

“The Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

On the Fifteenth Amendment; writing for the court, Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 (1939).
Judicial opinions

Pik Botha photo

“A new era has begun in South Africa. My government is removing racial discrimination. We want to be accepted by our African brothers.”

Pik Botha (1932–2018) South African politician

At the signing of the peace protocol in Brazzaville in 1988
Quoted in The Daily Maverick newspaper, 2 September 2011 http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-09-02-roelof-pik-botha-the-ultimate-survivor

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo

“The statute in section 3(1) contains a definition of a “racial group”. It means a “group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins.” That definition is very carefully framed. Most interesting is that it does not include religion or politics or culture. You can discriminate for or against Roman Catholics as much as you like without being in breach of the law. You can discriminate for or against Communists as much as you please, without being in breach of the law. You can discriminate for or against the “hippies” as much as you like, without being in breach of the law. But you must not discriminate against a man because of his colour or of his race or of his nationality, or of “his ethnic or national origins.” … You must remember that it is perfectly lawful to discriminate against groups of people to whom you object - so long as they are not a racial group. You can discriminate against the Moonies or the Skinheads or any other group which you dislike or to which you take objection. No matter whether your objection to them is reasonable or unreasonable, you can discriminate against them - without being in breach of the law.’}}”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Denning judged in the Court of Appeal at the time, and held that Sikhs were not a racial or ethnic group. His ruling was overturned in the House of Lords, notably by Ian Fraser, Baron Fraser of Tullybelton, who outlined seven points by which ethno-religious groups were to be defined.
Judgments

Mark Satin photo
Gregory of Nyssa photo

“For the majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing to perform this feat of mental analysis and of discriminating the material vehicle from the immanent beauty, … Owing to this men give up all search after the true Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline in their desires to dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to worldly honours, fame, and power. There is another class which is enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased make their gluttony the test of what is good. But he who turns from all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings after what is seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple, immaterial, formless, would never make a mistake like that when he has to choose between all the objects of desire; he would never be so misled by these attractions as not to see the transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an utter contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the discovery of the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men's love, be they never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the powers of loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be locked up within us unused and motionless; but only that they must first be cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to which sense can never reach.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 11

George W. Bush photo
Bell Hooks photo

“We resist hegemonic dominance of feminist thought by insisting that it is a theory in the making, that we must necessarily criticize, question, re-examine, and explore new possibilities. My persistent critique has been informed by my status as a member of an oppressed group, experience of sexist exploitation and discrimination, and the sense that prevailing feminist analysis has not been the force shaping my feminist consciousness. This is true for many women. There are white women who had never considered resisting male dominance until the feminist movement created an awareness that they could and should. My awareness of feminist struggle was stimulated by social circumstance. Growing up in a Southern, black, father-dominated, working class household, I experienced (as did my mother, my sisters, and my brother) varying degrees of patriarchal tyranny and it made me angry-it made us all angry. Anger led me to question the politics of male dominance and enabled me to resist sexist socialization. Frequently, white feminists act as if black women did not know sexist oppression existed until they voiced feminist sentiment. They believe they are providing black women with "the" analysis and "the" program for liberation. They do not understand, cannot even imagine, that black women, as well as other groups of women who live daily in oppressive situations, often acquire an awareness of patriarchal politics from their lived experience, just as they develop strategies of resistance (even though they may not resist on a sustained or organized basis). These black women observed white feminist focus on male tyranny and women's oppression as if it were a "new" revelation and felt such a focus had little impact on their lives. To them it was just another indication of the privileged living conditions of middle and upper class white women that they would need a theory to inform them that they were "oppressed." The implication being that people who are truly oppressed know it even though they may not be engaged in organized resistance or are unable to articulate in written form the nature of their oppression. These black women saw nothing liberatory in party line analyses of women's oppression. Neither the fact that black women have not organized collectively in huge numbers around the issues of "feminism" (many of us do not know or use the term) nor the fact that we have not had access to the machinery of power that would allow us to share our analyses or theories about gender with the American public negate its presence in our lives or place us in a position of dependency in relationship to those white and non-white feminists who address a larger audience.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 10.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Whenever racial discrimination exists it is a tragic expression of man’s spiritual degeneracy and moral bankruptcy. Therefore, it must be removed not merely because it is diplomatically expedient, but because it is morally compelling.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize — I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to — segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

"Social Justice and the Emerging New Age" http://www.wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/MLK.pdf address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)
1960s
Context: There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize — I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to — segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence. But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence…

Jennifer Beals photo
Joseph Massad photo
Ai Weiwei photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Charles T. Canady photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Alex Salmond photo
Francesco Berni photo

“He who conveys a ring, a horse, a hat,
And things like these, shows some discrimination;
Mere petty pilfering a the name for that.
But him who steals another's reputation,
And on the fruits of others' toil grows fat,
Hail thief and murderer by acclamation.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

Chi ruba un corno, un cavallo, un anello,
E simil cose, ha qualche discrezione,
potrebbe chiarnarsi ladroncello;
Ma quel che ruba la riputazione,
E de l'altrui fatiche si fa bello,
Si puo chiamare assassino e ladrone.
LI, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

Boutros Boutros-Ghali photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“Our visual discrimination is far better than our linguistic system at dealing with complex ratios and continuous variations in space, line, shape, and color.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 110

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice….”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Local 815, Teamsters and the Allied Trades Council (1967)

Karl Mannheim photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Tom Lehrer photo
William Hazlitt photo

“It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes… It is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express: it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it, out of eight or ten words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one the preferableness of which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Familiar Style" (1821)
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“I believe that the United States as a government, if it is going to be true to its own founding documents, does have the job of working toward that time when there is no discrimination made on such inconsequential reason as race, color, or religion.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Presidential news conference http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/quotes.html (13 May 1959)
1950s

Manmohan Singh photo

“Dalits have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability was apartheid.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

Comparing the caste system with apartheid, as quoted in "Indian leader likens caste system to apartheid regime" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/28/india.mainsection, The Guardian (UK) (28 December 2006)
2006-2010

David Morrison photo
Wanda Orlikowski photo
Aron Ra photo
Gianfranco Fini photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Philip Schaff photo

“The charge that Luther adapted the translation to his theological opinions has become traditional in the Roman Church, and is repeated again and again by her controversialists and historians.
In both cases, the charge has some foundation, but no more than the counter-charge which may be brought against Roman Catholic Versions.
The most important example of dogmatic influence in Luther's version is the famous interpolation of the word alone in Rom. 3:28 (allein durch den Glauben), by which he intended to emphasize his solifidian doctrine of justification, on the plea that the German idiom required the insertion for the sake of clearness. But he thereby brought Paul into direct verbal conflict with James, who says (James 2:24), "by works a man is justified, and not only by faith" ("nicht durch den Glauben allein"). It is well known that Luther deemed it impossible to harmonize the two apostles in this article, and characterized the Epistle of James as an "epistle of straw," because it had no evangelical character ("keine evangelische Art").
He therefore insisted on this insertion in spite of all outcry against it. His defense is very characteristic. "If your papist," he says,
The Protestant and anti-Romish character of Luther's New Testament is undeniable in his prefaces, his discrimination between chief books and less important books, his change of the traditional order, and his unfavorable judgments on James, Hebrews, and Revelation. It is still more apparent in his marginal notes, especially on the Pauline Epistles, where he emphasizes throughout the difference between the law and the gospel, and the doctrine of justification by faith alone; and on the Apocalypse, where he finds the papacy in the beast from the abyss (Rev. 13), and in the Babylonian harlot (Rev. 17). The anti-papal explanation of the Apocalypse became for a long time almost traditional in Protestant commentaries.
There is, however, a gradual progress in translation, which goes hand in hand with the progress of the understanding of the Bible. Jerome's Vulgate is an advance upon the Itala, both in accuracy and Latinity; the Protestant Versions of the sixteenth century are an advance upon the Vulgate, in spirit and in idiomatic reproduction; the revisions of the nineteenth century are an advance upon the versions of the sixteenth, in philological and historical accuracy and consistency. A future generation will make a still nearer approach to the original text in its purity and integrity. If the Holy Spirit of God shall raise the Church to a higher plane of faith and love, and melt the antagonisms of human creeds into the one creed of Christ, then, and not before then, may we expect perfect versions of the oracles of God.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

How Luther's theology may have influenced his translating

Rand Paul photo

“A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin. It is unenlightened and ill-informed to promote discrimination against individuals based on the color of their skin. It is likewise unwise to forget the distinction between public (taxpayer-financed) and private entities.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

Letter to the editor, Bowling Green Daily News, 2002-05-30
Rand Paul in '02: I may not like it, but 'a free society' will allow 'hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin'
Right Now
Washington Post
2010-05-20
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/rand_paul_in_2002_i_may_not_li.html

Warren Farrell photo
Joseph Massad photo
Benjamín Netanyahu photo

“We will bring a comprehensive plan to the government to assist you in every way. There is no room for racism and discrimination in our society, none… We will turn racism into something contemptible and despicable.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

As quoted in "Israel failed Ethiopian community, president says at memorial" http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-failed-ethiopian-community-president-says-at-memorial (17 May 2015), by Judah Ari Gross, The Times of Israel.
2010s, 2015

“Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow willhave to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange andgrotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and corruption is rampant. If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of Europeanculture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkersin Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defendingundesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha andour Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have butone task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.”

S. N. Balagangadhara (1952) Indian philosopher

Foreword by S. N. Balagangadhara in "Invading the Sacred" (2007)
Source: Balagangadhara, S.N. (2007), "Foreword." In Ramaswamy, de Nicolas & Banerjee (Eds.), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America . Delhi: Rupa & Co., pp. vii–xi.

Seba Johnson photo
F. R. Leavis photo
Zephyr Teachout photo

“The tools Facebook provides make discrimination easy. Facebook has monopoly profit margins, so it could easily provide real staffing to protect against discrimination, if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to.”

Zephyr Teachout (1971) American academic, political activist and candidate

Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook hearing was an utter sham https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/mark-zuckerbergs-facebook-hearing-sham?CMP=fb_gu (11 April 2018), The Guardian.

Ellen DeGeneres photo

“I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that's ever happened to me has taught me compassion.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen on Oprah show, 9th of November 2009

Maimónides photo
Hugo Diemer photo
Julia Serano photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
John Roberts photo

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

John Roberts (1955) Chief Justice of the United States

From the majority opinion in the Seattle School District case (28 June 2007) http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/28/scotus.race/index.html