Race As Concept Quotes & Sayings

We must come to the point where we realize the concept of race is a false one. There is only one race, the human race. — Dan Aykroyd

Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation — Emil Cioran

It is not possible to understand the NT concept of the church if we overlook the numerous metaphors used to portray it. The church is Christ's body, a temple, a family, a royal priesthood, twelve tribes, the chosen race, Abraham's children, the new creation, the bride of Christ, and so on. Bible readers should be careful not to construct their theology of the church on a single metaphor. — David Ewert

Build peaks, and former highlands become flatlands--ordinary topography loses its allure. The attempt to make our lives not a waste, by seeking a few most remarkable incidents, will make the rest of our lives a waste. The concept of experience turns us into dwellers in a plateau village who hold on to a myth of the happier race of people who live on the peaks. We climb up occasionally, but only with preparation, for short expeditions. We can't stay there, and everyone is restless and unsatisfied at home. — Mark Greif

I was wondering how Ms. Hetley, who seemed to occupy just about every slot on the New York Times hardback, paperback, and e-book bestseller lists, had managed to wring eight five-hundred-page installments out of the concept of wars between rival gangs of vampires and wizards when it seemed obvious to me that all a wizard would have to do to kick a vampire's ass was pounce on it during the day while it was sleeping. How could anyone take this stuff seriously, I wondered. Hetley's graphic depictions of wizard-on-vampire sex, which was creating a bloodthirsty, mutant race of evil, soulless 'vampards', seemed absurd. — Adam Langer

A verbalizing race has words for every old concept . . . and creates new words or new definitions for old words whenever a new concept comes along. Always! A nervous system that is able to verbalize cannot avoid verbalizing; it's automatic. — Robert A. Heinlein

Race is a biased concept; we are in fact all Africans. — Ben Tolosa

Those objecting to the concept of race argue that the taxonomic definitions are arbitrary and subjective. — J. Philippe Rushton

Now imagine that the human race had the means to put human settlers on all of these world using an affordable, sophisticated, safe drive that allows for speedy space travel across light years of space. I'm not talking about a simply FTL drive, ladies and gentlemen. this concept that you have before you is for instantaneous travel- Subspace travel. — Matthew S. Williams

Money fascinates me... It has the power to make and break nations... It determines a person's quality of life and limits us as a race what we're capable of accomplishing, yet it has no true value other than what we've placed on it. It's a man-made concept, yet it holds us back, keeps us from achieving well, everything. Peace. Equality. Just think of the scientific discoveries we've had to forgo because of a lack of funding. And it's all made up. none of it's real. — S.L. Madden

Minority conservatives hold a special place of gutter contempt in the minds of unhinged liberals, who can never accept the radical concept of a person of color rejecting identity politics. — Michelle Malkin

[R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We did not know that micro-organisms were so powerful and lived in our digestive systems in order to enable us to live, as well as mounting lethal attacks on us as parasites. We did not know of our close kinship with other animals. We believed that sprites, imps, demons, and djinns were hovering in the air about us. We imagined that thunder and lightning were portentous. It has taken us a long time to shrug off this heavy coat of ignorance and fear, and every time we do there are self-interested forces who want to compel us to put it back on again. — Christopher Hitchens

History could be as arbitrary as poetry, he told himself: what is history, other than a matter of choice, the picking and choosing of certain facts out of a multitude to elicit a meaningful pattern, which was not necessarily the true one? The act of selecting facts, by definition, inherently involved discarding facts as well, often the ones most inconvenient to the pattern that the historian was trying to reveal. Truth thus became an abstract concept: three different historians, working with the same set of data, might easily come up with three different "truths." Whereas myth digs deep into the fundamental reality of the spirit, into that infinite well that is the shared consciousness of the entire race, reaching the levels where truth is not an optional matter, but the inescapable foundation of all else. In that sense myth could be truer than history. — Robert Silverberg

It's only human,' you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure - as if 'to feel' were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not - as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not. — Ayn Rand

It seems clear, from reading the daily news if nothing else, that there will always be some in this world who want their holy wars, who will discriminate, vilify, and even kill in the name of God. They have narrowed down the concept of neighbor to include only those like themselves, in terms of creed, caste, race, sex, or sexual orientation. But there is also much evidence that there are many who know that a neighbor might be anyone at all, and are willing to act on that assumption. — Kathleen Norris

Deconstructing the concept of race not only conflicts with people's tendency to classify and build family histories according to common descent but also ignores the work of biologists studying non-human species. — J. Philippe Rushton

When God introduced man to the angels, Satan became the first racist. Satan belonged to a race of beings called angels, man to a new race of beings called humans. In Satan's mind, angels, particularly he himself, were far greater than mankind simply by design. In other words, Satan determined himself to superior to man based on immutable physical characteristics; therefore, he should not bow to man, man should bow to him. Although disobedience precipitated his fall, the concept of racial superiority ignited Satan's rebellion. — Amir Clayton Powell

The Oscars are a really strange concept to me, that films and acting can be competing against each other. We're not running the same race. It's like we're all doing different sports in fact. — Heath Ledger

It is because of the Biblical curse on man's search for knowledge, which has so paralyzed his mind during the past ages, and its detrimental effect upon progress, that makes the Bible the most wicked, the most detestable, the most pernicious, and the most obnoxious book ever published. It has been a curse to the human race.
It is the duty of every brave and honest man and woman to do everything in his and her power to destroy the influence of this utterly stupid and vicious book, with its infantile concept of life and its nonsense concerning the universe. It is their duty to do everything within their power to stop its demoralizing and paralyzing influence upon the life of man.
We will never achieve intellectual liberty until the wickedness of this book has been discarded with the belief in the flatness of the earth. — Joseph Lewis

Perhaps the most important Stoic legacy to the history of moral thought was the concept of universal humanity. In his famous Elements of Ethics, the second-century Stoic philosopher Hierocles imagines every individual as standing at the centre of a series of concentric circles. The first circle is the individual, next comes the immediate family, followed by the extended family, the local community, the country, and finally the entire human race. To be virtuous, Hierocles suggested, is to draw these circles together, constantly to transfer people from the outer circles to the inner circles, to treat strangers as cousins and cousins as brothers and sisters, making all human beings part of our concern. The Stoics called this process of drawing the circles together oikeiosis, a word that is almost untranslatable but means something like the process by which everything is made into your home. — Kenan Malik

At the same time there was the good of the poor and the good of the rich. And the good of the whites, the blacks and the yellow races ... More and more goods came into being, corresponding to each sect, race and class ... People began to realise how much blood had been spilt in the name of a petty, doubtful good, in the name of the struggle of this petty good against what is belied to be evil. Sometimes the very concept of good became a scourge, a greater evil than evil itself. — Vasily Grossman

Winning is an abstract concept. There is no winning in real life. Winning is just a device for storytellers to conveniently end a tale, but everyone knows that real stories - real lives - only end in death. But the dead don't win anything except the release from the never-ending game, the never-ending race. There is no winning, but that doesn't mean you have to lose. You can't lose if you refuse to play, if you refuse to fight, if you refuse the race the sun day after day. Don't surrender, because to surrender is to lose. Don't give up, because to give up is to lose. When you refuse to fight, there is no surrender. When you refuse to race the sun, you can finally stop to appreciate the light it brings to the earth each and every day. — Ilia Bera

Most aspiring screenwriters simply don't spend enough time choosing their concept. It's by far the most common mistake I see in spec scripts. The writer has lost the race right from the gate. Months - sometimes years - are lost trying to elevate a film idea that by its nature probably had no hope of ever becoming a movie. — Terry Rossio

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost". You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as "all lost people".
Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. — John Piper

The point is that all of the known nations and peoples resulted from the blessing God had established from the beginning. National and ethnic diversity was not an aberration. There is no room for the concept that there is one pure race while others are tainted, somehow the result of sin or corruption. — John H. Walton

When we begin to understand the concept of Karma we will never ever blame God for anything that happens to us. We will realise that we are responsible for all that happens to us. As we sow, so shall we reap. Rich or poor, saint or sinner, miser or philanthropist, learned or illiterate ... This is the Universal Law that applies to individuals, to whole communities, societies, nations and races. As we sow, so shall we reap. — Dada Vaswani

Personally, I find the concept of a "final theory," or a "theory of everything," rather limiting. The fun of discovery will most likely last as long as the human race continues. — Francisco J. Duarte

Eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, and nationality. We are all equals with a common pulse to survive. Every human requires food and water. Every human has a dream and desire to be happy. Every human responds to love, suffering and pain. Every human bleeds the same color and occupies the same world. Let us recognize that we are all part of each other. We are all human. We are all one. — Suzy Kassem

The great challenge to the modern period, and its peculiar danger, has been that in it man for the first time confronted man without the protection of differing circumstances and conditions. And it has been precisely this new concept of equality that has made modern race relations so difficult, for there we deal with natural differences which by no possible and conceivable change of conditions can become less conspicuous. It is because equality demands that I recognize each and every individual as my equal, that the conflicts between different groups, which for reasons of their own are reluctant to grant each other this basic equality, take on such terribly cruel forms. — Hannah Arendt

It is not enough to limit your love to your own nation, to your own group. You must respond with love even to those outside of it ... This concept enables people to live together not as nations, but as the human race. — Clarence Jordan

But the 20th century suffered "two" ideologies that led to genocides. The other one, Marxism, had no use for race, didn't believe in genes and denied that human nature was a meaningful concept. Clearly, it's not an emphasis on genes or evolution that is dangerous. It's the desire to remake humanity by coercive means (eugenics or social engineering) and the belief that humanity advances through a struggle in which superior groups (race or classes) triumph over inferior ones. — Steven Pinker

The notion that black folks have nothing to learn from scholarship that may reflect racial or racist biases is dangerous. It promotes closed-mindedness and a narrow understanding of knowledge to hold that "race" is such an overwhelming concept that it negates the validity of any insights contained in a work that may have some racist or sexist aspects. — Bell Hooks

The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations ... A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive
and nowhere else!
and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.
We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race ...
The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. — Robert A. Heinlein

The concept of reconciliation is not irretrievable, but I am convinced that before we theologians can interpret the depths of the divine action of reconciliation we must first articulate the profound deformities of Christian intimacy and identity in modernity. Until we do, all theological discussions of reconciliation will be exactly what they tend to be: (a) ideological tools for facilitating negotiations of power; or (b) socially exhausted idealist claims masquerading as serious theological accounts. In truth, it is not at all clear that most Christians are ready to imagine reconciliation. — Willie James Jennings

A "race to innocence" is what occurs when individuals assume that they are innocent of complicity in structures of domination and oppression.25 This concept captures the understandable assumption made by new immigrants or children of recent immigrants to any country. They cannot be responsible, they assume, for what occurred in their adopted country's past. Neither are those who are already citizens guilty, even if they are descendants of slave owners, Indian killers, or Andrew Jackson himself. Yet, in a settler society that has not come to terms with its past, whatever historical trauma was entailed in settling the land affects the assumptions and behavior of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and the children of recent immigrants. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The popular and scientific views of "race" no longer coincide. The word "race," as applied scientifically to human groupings, has lost any sharpness of meaning. To-day it is hardly definable in scientific terms, except as an abstract concept which may, under certain conditions, very different from those now prevalent, have been realized approximately in the past and might, under certain other but equally different conditions, be realized in the distant future. — Julian Huxley

regardless of the false nature of racial categories, the concept of race holds great social force. Our society uses race in spite of some people's disavowal and often treats us differentially as a result. Race has truly gotten under our skin, into our psyche, and lingers within the layers of our unconscious. To begin honestly, we must discuss what may be the most challenging aspect of any discussion of race. We must deal with the terms racist, racism, and systemic white supremacy. We must also confront the fact that some people might ask us to associate those words with our speech and actions. — Shelly Tochluk

If you know the history of the whole concept of whiteness if you know the history of the whole concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason you know that it was a trick, and it's worked brilliantly. You see, prior to the mid to late 1600s, in the colonies of what would become the United States, there was no such thing as the white race. Those of us of European descent did not refer to ourselves by that term really ever before then. — Tim Wise

I guess it all depends on whom you ask and when you ask. Race, I've learned, is in the eye of the beholder. — Raquel Cepeda