# Discrimination

Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or category.

## Quotes

* Tact is the discrimination of differences. It consists in conscious deviations.
** Theodor Adorno, in Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, p. 37
* What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.
** B. R. Ambedkar, in Writings of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar in Chronological Order
* Through detachment man learns to withdraw his interest and his consciousness from the things of the senses, and to turn a deaf ear to the calls of the lower nature. Detachment imposes a new rhythm upon the man. Through learning the lesson of dispassion he becomes immune to the suffering of the lower nature as he detaches his interest from secondary things and the non-essentials, and centers it upon the higher realities. Through the practice of discrimination the mind learns to select the good, the beautiful and the true. These three practices, leading to a changed attitude towards life and reality, will, when held sanely, bring in the rule of wisdom.
** Alice Bailey in From Bethlehem to Calvary: The Initiations of Jesus (1937). ISBN 978-0-85330-107-3.
* 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, in Headline from History – October 12th – The Mathew Shepard Story
* And each of us can practice rights ourselves, treating each other without discrimination, respecting each other's dignity and rights.
** Carol Bellamy, in Praeger Handbook on Understanding and Preventing Workplace Discrimination ..., p. 176
* Discrimination against Jews can be read in Thomas Aquinas, and insults against Jews in Martin Luther.
** Lionel Blue, in Jewish Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Admration for the Jews, Ten Commandments
* Typically, we define a perpetrator of discrimination as someone who acts intentionally to bring about some discriminatory result. This is a narrow and politically palatable conception; it applies to very few of us. ... I suggest that those of us who unquestionably accept the racial, gender, and heterosexual privileges we have—those of us who fail to acknowledge our victimless status with respect to racism, sexism, and homophobia—are also perpetrators of discrimination.
** Devin W. Carbado, "Privilege," in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology (Duke University Press: 2005), p. 190
* I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.
** Jimmy Carter, in LIFE 29 Jan 1971, p. 30
* It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics, because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth, while investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase it, creating more good jobs and new wealth for all of us.
** Bill Clinton, in Transcript: Bill Clinton's Democratic Convention Speech
* When we leave people out or write them off, we not only shortchange them and their dreams, we shortchange our country and our own futures.
** Hillary Clinton, speech in Orlando, Florida. Transcript (September 21, 2016)
* Since these early days, I have seen and have experienced many types of discrimination and all of them were rooted in the fear of people that were different than the majority.
** Tim Cook, WSJ.com
* In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by a long habit of observing ourselves.
** Charles Darwin, in The Moment of Racial Sight: A History p. 192
* Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.
** Andrea Dworkin, in Trouble and Strife, Issues 13-17, p. 45
* The continual subjugation of the masses depends on competition and internal disunity. As long as discrimination exists, and racial or ethnic minorities are oppressed, the entire working class is oppressed and weakened. This is so because the Capitalist class is able to use racism to drive down the wages of individual segments of the working class by inciting racial antagonism and forcing a fight for jobs and services. This division is a development that ultimately undercuts the living standards of all workers. Moreover, by pitting whites against Blacks and other oppressed nationalities, the Capitalist class is able to prevent workers from uniting against their common class enemy. As long as workers are fighting each other, Capitalist class rule is secure.
** Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution (1993)
* The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication.
** Michael Faraday, in Thoughts for Success, p. 20
* 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 in is the cause for anger, envy or discrimination?”
** Mahatma Gandhi, in Race Discrimination
* It matters more because it is in Africa, and there's still a kind of discrimination concerning the African continent, concerning their own disputes, concerning the assistance given to Africa, concerning the perception of the international community concerning Africa -- that they are in a hopeless situation. It is the poorest continent, and [the perception is] they don't deserve the same attention like Latin America or like Asia or like European problems.
** Boutros Boutros-Ghal, in What are the lessons of Rwanda,
* The laws against color can be removed, but that will leave the poverty that is the historic and institutionalized consequence of color. As long as this is the case, being born Negro will continue to be the most profound disability that the United States imposes upon a citizen.
** Michael Harrington, The Other America (1962), p. 71
* 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, in Praeger Handbook on Understanding and Preventing Workplace Discrimination ..., p. 13
* The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.
** Christopher Hitchens, The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism--The Very Best of Christopher ..., p. 231
* Liberalism, above all, means emancipation - emancipation from one's fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination, from poverty.
** Hubert H. Humphrey, in What Liberals Believe: Thousands of Quotes on Why America Needs to Be ..., p. 112
* For as long as the power of America's diversity is diminished by acts of discrimination and violence against people just because they are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or gay, we still must overcome.
** Ron Kind, in Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 26 (Tuesday, March 8, 2005)
* Discrimination is a hell hound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
** Martin Luther King, Jr., in Labels and Perceptions, the Subtle Ways of Racism. Reflections from My Memoirs, p. 2
* My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace - it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world. So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty.
** Aung San Suu Kyi, in Suu Kyi gives Nobel speech in Norway, 21 years later
* I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a black man in a white man's court. This should not be.
** Nelson Mandela, First court statement (1962)
* Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
** Thurgood Marshall in "Headline from History – October 12th – The Mathew Shepard Story".
* If you believe in equality, if you believe in standing up for the rights of all, especially for people most affected by bigotry and discrimination, then you have no choice but to be present and accounted for when it comes to standing up for gays and lesbians in our society.
** Michael Moore, in Moore may tackle gay rights
* Every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent.
** Pastoral Constitution of the Catholic Church Gaudium et Spes, 7 December 1965, Chapter 29
* Knowledge born of the finest discrimination takes us to the farthest shore. It is intuitive, omniscient, and beyond all divisions of time and space.
** Patanjali, in The Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali, p. 70
* The most likely victim of actual religious discrimination in British society is a Muslim, but the person who is most likely to feel slighted because of their religion is an evangelical Christian.
** Trevor Phillips, in Christians are more militant than Muslims, says Government's equalities boss
* Without promoting fraternity, our democracy cannot survive. And the dangerous demonisation of minorities has to be countered, as it is this hate which gets transformed into intense violence.
** Ram Puniyani, Combating Hate: Building Bridges of Love, 14 May 2020, NewsClick
* It is time to end the discrimination against people who need treatment for chemical addiction. It is time for Congress to deal with our Nation's number one public health problem.
** Jim Ramstad, United States of America Congressional Record Proceedings and Debates of the ..., p. 14054
* The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
** John Roberts, in
* It is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man's fitness for citizenship... We can not afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, or Scandinavian, or Magyar. What we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man.
** Theodore Roosevelt, message to the U.S. Congress (1905). As quoted in The Business of Transatlantic Migration between Europe and the United States, 1900–1914 (2012), by Drew Keeling, p. 161
* It is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
** Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Charles Steward Davison (3 January 1919).
* It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.
** Carl T. Rowan, in Wellspring: Daily Meditations to Refresh Your Soul, p. 263
* Diversity on the bench is critical. As practitioners, you need judges who 'get it!' We need judges who understand what discrimination feels like. We need judges who understand what inequality feels like. We need judges who understand the subtleties of unfair treatment and who are willing to call it out when they see it!
** Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in Stereotyping and Prejudice, p. 259
* Racism cannot be cured solely by attacking some of the results it produces, like discrimination in housing or in education.
** Sargent Shriver, in Point of the lance, p. 143
* Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them.
** Joseph E. Stiglitz, in "Headline from History – October 12th – The Mathew Shepard Story".
* How I wish we lived in a time when laws were not necessary to safeguard us from discrimination.
** Barbra Streisand, in A Quote for Every Day, p. 337
* It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.
** Anne Sullivan, in Helen Keller: A Life, p. 56
* 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, in "Headline from History – October 12th – The Mathew Shepard Story".
* Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.
** Desmond Tutu, in God Is Not A Christian, p. 51
* 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 A. Wallace, in Blue Butterflies: Miracles, Mercies, Mysteries and Lessons Learned, p. 1
* All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting discrimination in public education must yield.
** Earl Warren, in "Headline from History – October 12th – The Mathew Shepard Story".
* Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me.
** Ryan White, in The American Paradox: A History of the United States Since 1945, p. 322
* In the long run, there is not much discrimination against superior talent.
** Carter G. Woodson, in The Influence of a School District's Early Childhood Education Policy on ..., p. 21
* Negroes who have been so long inconvenienced and denied opportunities for development are naturally afraid of anything that sounds like discrimination.
** Carter Godwin Woodson, in Education: Ends and Means, p. 289
* I am not a racist. I am against every form of racism and segregation, every form of discrimination. I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color.
** Attributed to Malcolm X in Ovenden, Kevin. Malcolm X: Socialism and Black Nationalism. Bookmarks. ISBN 978-0-906224-71-7.

## See also

* Consciousness
* Dehumanization
* Differentiation
* Fairness
* Gender bias on Wikipedia
* Human rights
* Philosophy
* Prejudice
* Racism
* Semantics