Quotes About Prejudice

I applied to Oxford in the '80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene from 'Billy Elliot.' People were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life.

A dominant misconception among believers is that their atheist brethren are a slavering pack of hell-bound debauchees, gleefully wining and wenching their way through life while loudly professing their amorality.

I still find that a kind of stricture of the heart happens when I see any form of bigoted or racist behaviour. I get an actual pain in my heart.

When you talk about professional footballers, rightly or wrongly, people often already have an idea in their head about what they're like; they'll paint a picture before they've met them.

A kind of racism still exists in the United States, and Islamophobia is a more convenient way to express that sentiment. There has also been an attempt to paint Muslims as enemies of the United States.

I don't look like the way we've painted directors in our movies and everything since forever. I don't look like an old white guy in a baseball cap. So, yes, there are always moments when people are surprised that I'm the director.

If you grow up saying, 'I want to be a lawyer,' everyone says, 'Let's give her everything she needs to be a lawyer.' But if you say 'I want to be an artist or a dancer or a painter,' it's, 'Oh, she'll grow out of it.'

If most people were to take a moment to picture in their minds the average, not-for-profit, save-the-world girl, they... well, they probably wouldn't, because who wants to think about hemp, hairy legs, and Birkenstocks? But I'd rather eat a pair of Birkenstocks than put them on my feet, and I love, love, love my Christian Louboutins.

I was shot at for being a Tamil in Sri Lanka, and then, everyone was calling me a Paki in London, and I'm not even Pakistani.

'English Rose' - what does that actually mean? That I am pale? That I am English, maybe? They are going to say that about any actress from this country!

So much of male heterosexual comedy can be steeped in a gay panic. A lot of juvenile comedy is predicated on that.

These days, if you see something and say something, you're just a paranoid bigot.

How dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or merely literary critic, tell me not to act colored.

Paris. Toulouse. Malmo. Copenhagen. Brussels. Berlin. For most people, they are lovely cities where you might happily take a holiday. But for the world's Jews, they are something else, too. They are place names of hate.

It's a very frightening feeling to feel like you can have a busted taillight or wear a hoodie or be playing in a park, and someone can take your life away. To have two children, two black boys, you ask yourself a lot of questions about how do I protect my family. Is there anything I can actually do?

How can any person with a myopic view and harbouring intense parochial attitude even think of leading the nation?

People assume that I'm an aristocrat, but I don't really feel part of any class.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

My being Muslim is only one part of my identity. But particularly in India and the world over, a concerted effort is being made to diminish all other aspects of identity and only take your religious identity as who you are.

An agent said he didn't know what to do with me, I wouldn't be able to play any parts but lesbians and aliens.

I know the only reason that I haven't gotten many good parts is because I am Latin - and they tell it to my face a lot of times.

We keep racism alive. We pass it on to our children. I think that is very sad.

Just passing laws saying you are not allowed to be racist won't work. You need an educational system in place.

Christian Fronters attacked Jews on the streets of New York City in actions reminiscent of Krystallnacht.