121 Stereotypes Quotes

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

The truth is most women are weak, be they mortal or immortal. But when they are strong, they are absolutely unpredictable.

I don't like American girls. They're very conceited, you know. In Europe they're more pleasant.

To some extent we are all the prisoners of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely.

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.

What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

The most casual examination will reveal the fact that all the jokes about the horrible results of masculine cooking and sewing are written by men. It is all part of a great scheme of sex propaganda.

Teens are always shown as one dimensional. They're stereotyped. When I was in high school, I cared about more than getting a date or making the team.

French troops arrived in Afghanistan last week, and not a minute too soon. The French are acting as advisers to the Taliban, to teach them how to surrender properly.

Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

It will be a sad day for the world when the Oriental gent realizes that Western bumbling is only Eastern guile in a different idiom. Well, a lot of it, anyway.

For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.

She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the categories they commonly used when talking about girls; she wasn't a cock-teaser, a cold fish, an easy lay or a sneaky bitch; she was an honorary person. She had grown to share their contempt for most women.

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

Being a Southern person and a blonde, it's not a good combination. Immediately, when people meet you, they think of you as not being smart.

Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?

It would be a very short pint. It would be gummy bears and matzah, and be called Chewy Jewy.

Denmark (also called 'Norway') is best known as the original home of the prune Danish as well as the Vikings, who wore hats with horns sticking out of them, and for a very good reason: they were insane.

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

'This is now the twelfth day of rioting in France. They have been rioting for almost two weeks. And France has still not surrendered. That's like a record.

The truth is, one can work for another ten years and be playing parts, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and you are still accused of that. You're still tainted with that brush. I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law' or 'Heartthrob Jude Law'. In England anyway, that's my full name. That's the cheap language that's thrown around, that sums you up in one little bracket. It doesn't look at your life. But if one looks beyond, there is actually a little bit more.'

They constantly use the words eccentric, eccentric, eccentric, weird. I am boring. I am boring!

But here's what they don't tell you. You can never make a woman happy, it's impossible. I've never met a happy woman in my life. They're always complaining about something. You can fuck a woman with a diamond dick and make her come ten times, and she'll still complain. 'Why did you make me come so hard? This diamond dick is cloudy, why didn't you go to Tiffany's? You're so fucking cheap.'

Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American, someone (Michael Moore) who actually embodies all of those qualities.

I think there is a predisposition among Christians that Hollywood is anti-Jesus or anti-Christianity. I was warned I'd have to fight to maintain the freedom to express my beliefs. It's an unfair stereotype, and so far that's been the farthest from the truth. While everyone I work with may not share my beliefs, I have been surrounded by nothing but support.' -Clay Aiken - Today's Christian Magazine[2]

They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgeable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.

It makes me so mad that some people underestimate the wisdom and energy of young people. All because they don't look the way older folks think they should look. I'm working on a song about it. Maybe some of those closed minded people will realise long hair and tattoos don't mean they should be ignored. Close minded people are part of what's wrong with this world.

The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl. They simply found the entire proposition ridiculous. Writers were dead and English, or else extremely elderly and American; they were not sixteen years old and Canadian. It would have been worse if I'd been a boy, though. Never mind the fact that all the really stirring poems I'd read at that time had been about slaughter, mayhem, sex and death - poetry was thought of as existing in the pastel female realm, along with embroidery and flower arranging. If I'd been male I would probably have had to roll around in the mud, in some boring skirmish over whether or not I was a sissy.

If we meet an honest and intelligent politician, a dozen, a hundred, we say that they aren't like politicians at all, and our category of politician stays unchanged; we know what politicians are like.

Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose Your idea of happiness ... To fight Your idea of misery ... Submission The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility The vice you detest most ... Servility Your aversion ... Martin Tupper Favourite occupation ... Book-worming Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust] Favourite flower ... Daphne Favourite colour ... Red Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny Favourite dish ... Fish Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me] Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted].

Tongue -, well that's a wery good thing when it ain't a woman's.

Only in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles - and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn't their fault they were given a gift like speech - look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.

Amusingly, it [astrology] falls foul of our modern taboo against lazy stereotyping. How would we react if a newspaper published a daily column that read something like this: 'Germans: It is in your nature to be hard-working and methodical, which should serve you well at work today. In your personal relationships, especially this evening, you will need to curb your natural tendency to obey orders. Chinese: Inscrutability has many advantages, but it may be your undoing today. British: Your stiff upper lip may serve you well in business dealings, but try to relax and let yourself go in your social life.

Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell.

Listen, son. Most women are damn fools and children. But they've got more range then we've got. The brave ones are braver, the good ones are better - and the vile ones are viler, for that matter.

Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.

As with all great artists, Mozart expressed not only the soul, the taste and the aroma of his epoch, but also the spiritual world of man-man for all ages, in all the complexity of his desires, his struggles and ambivalence. Some of us, who only identify in Mozart a certain aristocratic refinement, may find these words strange. Often we meet with a condescending attitude towards him, to his music, reminiscent of chiming bells in a music box! ...'It's very nice, but not for me' say such people, 'give me passion - Beethoven, Brahms, tragic, monumental...' Such comments only reveal one thing, these people don't know Mozart.

'But what can I do?' cried she, spreading out her arms helplessly. 'I can not hew down trees, as my father used; and in all this end of the king's domain there is nothing else to be done. For there are so many shepherds that no more are needed, and so many tillers of the soil that no more can find employment. Ah, I have tried; hut no one wants a weak girl like me.' 'Why don't you become a witch?' asked the man. 'Me!' gasped Mary-Marie, amazed. 'A witch!' 'Why not?' he inquired, as if surprised. 'Well,' said the girl, laughing. 'I'm not old enough. Witches, you know, are withered dried-up old hags.' 'Oh, not at all!' returned the stranger. 'And they sell their souls to Satan, in return for a knowledge of witchcraft,' continued Mary-Marie more seriously. 'Stuff and nonsense!' cried the stranger angrily. 'And all the enjoyment they get in life is riding broomsticks through the air on dark nights,' declared the girl. 'Well, well, well!' said the old man in an astonished tone. 'One might think you knew all about witches, to hear you chatter. But your words prove you to be very ignorant of the subject. You may find good people and bad people in the world; and so, I suppose, you may find good witches and bad witches. But I must confess most of the witches I have known were very respectable, indeed, and famous for their kind actions.' 'Oh. I'd like to be that kind of witch!' said Mary-Marie, clasping her hands earnestly.

...the other day, I went to a chiropractor. He's just a regular chiropractor. Whenever I meet someone who doesn't know me, they say, 'Oh you're the guy who bites the heads off everything.' I get kind of cheesed off with it, but at least they remember. The thing that pisses me off is that that's not what I'm about. If that's what you think Ozzy Osbourne's about, then you're way off.

... the stereo-type of scientists being scruffy nerds with rows of pens in their top pocket is just about as wicked as racist stereotypes.