The fight against discrimination has long been an important issue and today, I have decided to make a list of the best and notable sayings, anecdotes, and quotes about discrimination! ✋🏾
Below is a compilation of sayings about prejudice, bias, inequity, and quotes about discrimination that will surely awaken the spirit of love, acceptance, and equality in all of us.
Side note: If I have missed some important quotes about discrimination, make sure to share it down below and I will add it to this list!
57+ Insightful Quotes About Discrimination
1. “Discrimination is a disease.” – Roger Staubach
2. “Achievement has no color.” – Abraham Lincoln
3. “Discrimination involves reflection and absorption.” – Frederick Lindemann
4. “Let’s practice motivation and love, not discrimination and hate.” – Zendaya
5. “It is not discrimination to treat different things differently.” – Maggie Gallagher
6. “I have an intensive hatred for discrimination based on color.” – John Diefenbaker
7. “Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.” – Bill Gates
8. “Discrimination is not liberal. Arguing against discrimination is not intolerance.” – Richard Dawkins
9. “Discrimination and prejudice of any kind have no place in sports or in our society.” – Jerry Reinsdorf
10. “Tact is the discrimination of differences. It consists of conscious deviations.” – Theodor Adorno
11. “There should be no discrimination against languages people speak, skin color, or religion.” – Malala Yousafzai
12. “Wind does not discriminate – it touches everyone, everything. He liked that about wind.” – Lish McBride
13. “The best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” – John Roberts
14. “Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination.” – Barack Obama
15. “Freedom means equality. If you don’t believe in equality for all, you don’t believe in freedom.” – DaShanne Stokes
16. “Judging a person does not define who they are, It defines who you are.” – Unknown
17. “Humans are naturally illusioned in discrimination; it starts when we look for the first time in the mirror.” – M.F. Moonzajer
18. “Discrimination had become like Wi-Fi: She couldn’t see it, but somehow her career was connected to it.” –
19. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
20. “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man – the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel
21. “No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.” – Zainab Salbi
22. “Our global community has come a long way in helping to eliminate discrimination, but we still have far to go.” – Robert Alan Silverstein
23. “I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.” – Malcolm X
24. “To positively discriminate in favor of groups that have been negatively discriminated against in the past.” – Ben Elton
25. “Being less discriminative shouldn’t mean protecting nasty people, then discriminating against the innocent.” – James Perrin
26. “The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.” – Christopher Hitchens
27. “Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.” – Muhammad Ali
28. “Racism cannot be cured solely by attacking some of the results it produces, like discrimination in housing or in education.” – Sargent Shriver
29. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.” – Nelson Mandela
30. “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” – Bertrand Russell
31. “I think people would live a bit longer if they didn’t know how old they were. Age puts restrictions on things.” – Karl Pilkington
32. “And each of us can practice rights ourselves, treating each other without discrimination, respecting each other’s dignity and rights.” – Carol Bellamy
33. “Discrimination no matter how small is wrong. Support of discrimination no matter who does it is wrong.” – Germany Kent
34. “Discrimination means keeping the negative and unhappy thoughts away and allowing the pretty thoughts to come inside you.” – Frederick Lenz
35. “Most of society’s decision making for young people happens without young people, and that could not happen without adultcentrism.” – Adam Fletcher
36. “When someone else’s safety and acceptance in society is on the line, your personal discomfort comes in a very distant second.” – Courtney Milan
37. “Sexual, racial, gender violence, and other forms of discrimination and violence in a culture cannot be eliminated without changing culture.” – Charlotte Bunch
38. “Like a pet fish unaware of the fishbowl it lives in, each of us inherently discriminates against young people without knowing it.” – Adam Fletcher
39. “If tolerance, respect, and equity permeate family life, they will translate into values that shape societies, nations, and the world.” – Kofi Annan
40. “The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.” – Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
41. “Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.” – Milan Kundera
42. “Any discrimination, like sharp turns in a road, becomes critical because of the tremendous speed at which we are traveling into the high-tech world of a service economy.” – Clarence Thomas
43. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
44. “Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.” – Steven Pinker
45. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.” – Nelson Mandela
46. “Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.” – Erich Fromm
47. “Education is important because, first of all, people need to know that discrimination still exists. It is still real in the workplace, and we should not take that for granted.” – Alexis Herman
48. “This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.” – Joe Miller
49. “It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.” – Henry Wallace
50. “The only difference between man and man all the world over is one of degree, and not of kind, even as there is between trees of the same species. Where is the cause of anger, envy, or discrimination?” – Mahatma Gandhi
51. “Through love, tribes have been intermixing colors to reveal a new rainbow world. And as more time passes, this racial and cultural blending will make it harder for humans to side with one race, nation, or religion over another.” – Suzy Kassem
52. “All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.” – Bishop John Shelby Spong
53. “We call upon all communities to be tolerant—to reject prejudice based on cast, creed, sect, religion, or gender. To ensure freedom and equality for women so that they can flourish. We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” – Malala Yousafzai
54. “Discrimination due to age is one of the great tragedies of modern life. The desire to work and be useful is what makes life worth living, and to be told your efforts are not needed because you are the wrong age is a crime.” – Johnny Ball
55. “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” – Nelson Mandela
56. “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” – Susan B. Anthony