Race Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?

For the most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals.

Henry David Thoreau

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The anger [of black people] is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

Fertile plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliff-walled lake, and brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided development of a fine race.

Theodore Roosevelt

No empire intoxicated with the red wine of power and the plunder of weaker races has yet lived long in this world.

The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.

Bertrand Russell

Seems fairly clear that you fix a breed by LIMITING the amount of alien infiltration. You make a race by homogeneity and by avoiding INbreeding.... No argument has ever been sprouted against it. You like it in dogs and horses.

At the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory...

Friedrich Nietzsche

On India rests the burden of pointing the way to all the exploited races of the earth.

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.

An enormous amount of modern ingenuity is expended on finding defences for the indefensible conduct of the powerful. As I have said above, these defences generally exhibit themselves most emphatically in the form of appeals to physical science. And of all the forms in which science, or pseudo-science, has come to the rescue of the rich and stupid, there is none so singular as the singular invention of the theory of races.

G. K. Chesterton

For a fallen India to aspire to move the world and protect the weaker races is seemingly an impertinence.

Hindus, if they want unity among different races, must have the courage to trust the minorities.

Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whale-bone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have "seen the elephant"? These are pretty and accidental uses; just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to make buttons and flageolets of our bones.

Henry David Thoreau

The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.

He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race.

The development of a kind heart, or feeling of closeness for all human beings, does not involve any of the kind of religiosity we normally associate with it...It is for everyone, irrespective of race, religion or any political affiliation.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The bicycle riders drank much wine, and were burned and browned by the sun. They did not take the race seriously except among themselves.

Ernest Hemingway

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

I have at last, after several months' experience, made up my mind that [New York] is a splendid desert--a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race.

Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

Bertrand Russell