Demonizing Quotes & Sayings

Despite all the hype about local or green food, the single biggest impediment to wider adoption is not research, programs, organizations, or networking. It is the demonizing and criminalizing of virtually all indigenous and heritage-based food practices. — Joel Salatin

Our right to disagree is precious but fragile. The best way to protect and preserve it is to let the other side speak without demonizing them or destroying their right to be heard. Such civil exchanges are the heart beat of democracy - essential to keeping it alive. — Madeleine M. Kunin

I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence. — Freeman Dyson

We have a nasty habit of flushing down the memory hole "the people who lost." Or demonizing them. Going back in time and painting Snidely Whiplash mustaches on their luckless countenances. — Bill Kauffman

Too many people had spent too long demonizing or totemizing me to listen seriously to what I had to say. — Salman Rushdie

... once you start demonizing groups of people, when you make them the other, you can justify doing just about anything you want to the, can't you? Look at history if you don't believe me. — Brunonia Barry

The tragedy of Africa is that Africans are in the business of canonizing thieves and demonizing its saints. — PLO Lumumba

Nothing drives your opponents more crazy than being utterly reasonable. And nothing makes demonizing or delegitimizing your opponents easier than letting them shriek unreasonable things for you. The Republicans need to get back to being the party that elicits unreasonable shrieking from their opponents. Not the other way around. — Jonah Goldberg

It's an unholy crusade against good people everywhere, all in my name. If I had a stomach, I'd be sick to it. You see now why so many good people just give up out there? You can only take so much evil pretending to be good. You can only handle so many broken souls acting as if good people are the evil ones, before you raise your hands and claim defeat. But I want you all to understand something. There is evil happening. There are spirits from Hell demonizing. There are even wars planned, and dark judgments justified by the self-righteous fanatics. But none of that means good can't also triumph. None of that means good cannot rise up against hatred, against judgment, against the armies of Hell itself, and bring about a tidal wave of joy and love. Evil does, but good always is. — Sean Patrick Brennan

I am tired of the constant demonizing of people via political labels. — Mark Skousen

Until politicos take a true stand in defense of marriage by proposing an anti-adultery amendment to the Constitution, stop demonizing gays and lesbians when the one debasing your marriage is the individual in the mirror. — John Ridley

Whereas literalists and fundamentalists tend to choose one pole of any dilemma or opposition, whereas modern political parties and religious groups tend towards demonizing each other, the creative individual must be born again and again in the crucible created by the tension between opposing instincts, conflicted feelings, and contrasting ideas. — Michael Meade

Instead of unfairly demonizing teachers, we should be working with them to find solutions to the problems in our schools and make sure every child gets an outstanding public education. — Albio Sires

Like Teresa [of Avila], each of us is a mix of unseen strengths and conflicting desires. While it is easy to understand our suffering in terms of external difficulties, most of us aren't aware of the significant role we play in our own difficult dramas. Like Job, we rail against the heavens for sending us trials at times, while in actuality, our own [inner] shadow is our most formidable opponent. One of the keys to living deeply is to learn how to befriend our shadows instead of demonizing them. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

Avoid demonizing television, computer games, and new technologies. Electronic media may compete for kids' attention, but we're not going to get kids reading by badmouthing other entertainment. Admit that TV and games can do things books can't. — Jon Scieszka

It's important for people not to feel like doing things that are immature, stuff you have to try out when you're a teenager, is bad, per se. Demonizing it is one of the reasons it becomes such an issue. — Grimes

Why is Netanyahu pushing war? Among several reasons, demonizing Iran reduces pressure on Israel to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. Many Israelis prefer building Jewish settlements on Palestinians' land instead. Moreover, Israel's rulers oppose any development-such as an Iranian-U.S. detente-that could diminish Israel's U.S.-financed hegemony in the region. War with Iran would be a catastrophe all around. Netanyahu and his hawkish American allies-the same people who gave us the disastrous Iraq war and ISIS-must be repudiated. — Sheldon Richman

People with BPD tend to judge themselves and others in extreme ways. They will often use excessively positive terms, idealizing or glorifying, or excessively negative terms, demonizing or devaluing themselves or others. They look at themselves with harsh and critical negative self-judgments that increase their sense of shame. — Valerie Porr

The important question isn't how to keep bad physicians from harming patient; it's how to keep good physicians from harming patients. Medical malpractice suits are a remarkably ineffective remedy.
(In reference to a Harvard Medical Practice Study) ... fewer than 2 percent of the patients who had received substandard care ever filed suit. Conversely, only a small minority among patients who did sue had in fact been victims of negligent care. And a patient's likelihood of winning a suit depended primarily on how poor his or her outcome was, regardless of whether that outcome was caused by disease or unavoidable risks of care. The deeper problem with medical malpractice is that by demonizing errors they prevent doctors from acknowledging & discussing them publicly. The tort system makes adversaries of patient & physician, and pushes each other to offer a heavily slanted version of events.
— Atul Gawande

Robert Spencer, a prolific anti-Islam writer and a leading Islamophobe who is bent on distorting Islam and demonizing Muslims, has persistently argued that violence and terrorism employed by Muslim extremists is rooted in the Quran and its message. Spencer calls the Quran, a book sacred to Muslim, 'the jihadists' Mein Kampf,' in reference to Hitler's memoir. — Louay M. Safi

The war propaganda effort requires demonizing the enemy, especially the leader of the country targeted. It's easier to convince people to sacrifice to fight another "Hitler" than an enemy who demonstrates an element of humanity. That is the role of the propagandists: Demonize and build hate regardless of how many lies have to be told. — Ron Paul

Our current prison state has the dual effect of getting rid of a superfluous population of basically unskilled workers (with a close race-class correlation), and also demonizing them ... The drug war is basically for this - It has nothing to do with drugs, but it has plenty to do with criminalizing an unwanted population and scaring everybody else. — Noam Chomsky

When people sit across from people - gay, straight, whatever - and they talk, they find out that people they may have been demonizing for their lifetime aren't the demons we've expected them to be. — Mark Ruffalo

So long as the stereotype is used as a way of understanding how to fix the problem as opposed to demonizing a people or writing them off, then I think it's OK. — Malcolm Gladwell

The Ouija Board has been evil since 1973. Why 1973? That's the year The Exorcist was released into theatres, raising the horror genre to a new level and forever demonizing this once effective communication device. — Daniel Cumerlato

Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced his resignation on Thursday, leaves a dismal legacy at the Justice Department, but one of his legal innovations was especially pernicious: the demonizing of state attempts to ensure honest elections. — Edwin Meese

People deal with their shadow side in a number of ways, the most common way being to find outside enemies and point to them, demonizing them and blaming them for long lists of perceived evils. This strategy often does a very effective job of helping us avoid that which lurks within us. Politicians and radio talk-show hosts and pastors can become very skilled in this, constantly pointing out the darkness and evil and twisted ways of others to avoid dealing with the doubts and insecurities and questions they bear in their own bones. — Rob Bell

When absorbing the sadness of the loss, we must concentrate on bad guys to demonize, or black holes of sympathy in which we get to play the cosmic victim of terrible circumstances. Demonizing and victimizing are the sources of those stories in which we can get so woefully stuck — John P. Schuster

There's been the same kind of demonizing of the word 'feminism' as words like 'liberal,' 'affirmative action,' and so on. — Gloria Steinem

We can't expect to solve problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. — Barack Obama

I'm not a big guy that believes that you gain energy from demonizing other people. I think you gain energy from giving people hope. — John Kasich

Accusing somebody of racism is a very effective weapon in Germany. Islamists know this: As soon as you accuse someone of demonizing Islam, then the European side backs down. — Bassam Tibi

When I look at the Republicans, I am tempted to dismiss them as the Treason Party. Seriously, were a band of traitors to concoct a series of positions deliberately designed to weaken America, they would be hard pressed to beat the current GOP dogma - hobble education, starve the government by slashing taxes to the rich, kneecap attempts to jumpstart the economy by fixating on debt, invite corporations to dominate political discourse, balkanize the population by demonizing minorities and immigrants and let favored religions dictate social policy. — Neil Steinberg

Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with the 'demonized' so that the demonizing will stop; it stands with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away. — Greg Boyle

I now know that to do a worthwhile family history I must interpret the past without falling into either demonizing or unquestioning acceptance ... As a playwright, what I object to right now is any form of fundamentalism, whether it's nationalistic, religious or ethnic ... I think it is ridiculous - and fundamentalist, by the way - to say that I am not changed by the culture around me. — David Henry Hwang

Japan would live and die by the race card - defining (and demonizing) America as "white" and thus Japan as a kindred but clearly superior "yellow" people. — Victor Davis Hanson

I always felt that if countries knew each other better, there would be less war. Often, conflict goes with demonizing other countries and cultures. — Sebastian Thrun

As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories. — Pankaj Mishra

So one of my core themes in The Myth of Male Power - that history's controlling force was not patriarchy, but survival - is still ignored. Instead, the leading universities' women's studies and "gender studies" courses still emanate from the Marxist and Civil Rights model of oppressor vs. oppressed. We'll see in this book exactly why the dichotomy of oppressor/oppressed is both inaccurate and, more important, undermines love and women's empowerment. In virtually every leading university this leads to a demonizing of men and masculinity that distorts the very essence of traditional masculinity - being socialized to be a hero by being willing to sacrifice oneself in war or in work. The possibility that being socialized to be disposable is not genuine power is, to this day, either considered radical, heretical, or, most frequently, not considered. — Warren Farrell

Anything that binds people together into a moral matrix that glorifies the in-group while at the same time demonizing another group can lead to moralistic killing, and many religions are well suited for that task. Religion is therefore often an accessory to atrocity, rather than the driving force of the atrocity. — Jonathan Haidt

I practiced law for five years and that gives you insight into a certain mind-set that maybe a lot of writers haven't had firsthand access to. There's an almost casual cruelty, a very low level of overall awareness, but sometimes there's also knowledge that real damage is being done - this attitude of "Oh, what the hell," this kind of moral cognitive dissonance. These are people who have never missed a meal. It's an unknowingness, an unawareness ... Many people were operating from a very narrow range of experience, and yet they had complete faith in it. Their way was the correct way, the only way. They had virtually no awareness of any other way of life except in terms of demonizing things ... It's an extremely blindered experience of the world. — Ben Fountain

With each newly minted crisis, US leaders roll out the same time-tested scenario. They start demonizing a foreign leader ... charging them with being communistic or otherwise dictatorial, dangerously aggressive, power hungry, genocidal, given to terrorism or drug trafficking, ready to deny us access to vital resources, harboring weapons of mass destruction, or just inexplicably "anti-American" and "anti-West." Lacking any information to the contrary, the frightened public ... are swept along. — Michael Parenti

It's my belief that by demonizing Saddam, by raising the stakes in this war to the point where we're talking about a great moral crusade, that Bush in fact planted the seeds of discontent in the country, because this was fundamentally a limited war with limited objectives and with limited gains. — Rick Atkinson

Why should everybody embrace the herd instinct, which required one to regard one set of politicians as being always in the right while demonizing another set? — Alexander McCall Smith

So far, the official definitions of terrorism have the role of demonizing the enemies of the United States and Israel, and of sanitizing recourse to indiscriminate force by both governments that causes widespread death of innocent civilians. This double standard is built around the current way in which the vocabulary of terrorism is being used in this country. — Richard A. Falk

I don't give a darn about coal or about oil. I do give a darn about oil jobs. I do give a darn about the jobs that coal can bring ... I am against the Obama administration demonizing certain forms of energy and glorying others. I say, bring it all in. — Niger Innis

The system of slavery, maintained for over two hundred years at the South, had performed a most perverting, morally desolating, and we might say, demonizing work on the dominant race, which people bred under our free civilization can not at once understand, nor scarcely believe when it is declared unto them. This reluctance to believe unwelcome truths has been the snare of our national life. We have not been willing to believe how hardened, despotic, and cruel the wielders of irresponsible power may become. When — John McElroy

I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. — Mark Lynas

I don't really think of time off as writing blocks. I think that's a western notion of demonizing inactivity. When your imagination decides it needs to take a nap. maybe that's what it needs to do. — Elliott Smith