John Derbyshire Quotes

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals.

I don't believe in stereotypes. Most of the time, stereotypes are just that.

People want to typecast you; it's human nature.

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it representative of a whole class.

If something happens that reinforces your stereotype, it’s a big deal.

People are quick to pigeonhole you.

We all judge people.

Anytime you're saying that a person will be thinking one way or another or biased one way or another just based upon race, I just think it's certainly going to be subject to that criticism of racism.

It's assumed that light-skinned women have no problems or issues, but they are judged before you know who they are.

You're never going to get beyond other people's preconceptions of what you are and what you're about.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

One of the best things about humans is we recognize patterns, so we get things like science, music, philosophy. One of the worst things is that we see patterns that are not there so we get things like racism, homophobia and Jerry Falwell.

I know people look at me and try to make conclusions about me immediately, based on the obvious, let's say.

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.

Some social scientists say that in-group/out-group biases are hard-wired into the human brain. Even without overt prejudice, it is cognitively convenient for people to sort items into categories and respond based on what is usually associated with those categories: a form of statistical discrimination, playing the odds.

You see people, you judge. It's just the human thing to do - good or bad, it's a fact. Like when you get a coffee at Starbucks and the person is rude to you. My mom always says, 'Yeah, but you don't know what kind of day they're having.' You don't know the back-story, and that's why it's so fun to be an actor and to get into the back-story.

The point is that these decisions they've made are partly for your convenience and partly for theirs and partly out of stereotypes that they carry with them from the conventions of the computer field.

A lot of improvisers mistakenly assume stand-up is awful, because there are a lot of stand-ups in the world that did not appeal to me. It was so easy to make a blanket statement when I was improvising only: 'Stand-up's terrible.' It's so ignorant and stupid to do that. But it's easy to do that. So that's where I came from.

You know, sometimes an interviewer will look at me and say - you're bright! They're actually surprised I might be bright.

Never judge a person if you don't know him.

People aren't born racist.

People have a preconceived notion about who I am and it's interesting. It's like picking who you want to win for the Oscars and not seeing the movie. Before you make a statement about someone, get all the information and see everything before you make a judgment.

When people talk about someone you have preconceived judgments.

Just as our brains fill in the details of an image our eyes record only roughly, so, too, do our brains employ tricks we are unaware of to fill in details about people we don't know intimately.