Epithets Quotes

“Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm. Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice.”
― Robert Green Ingersoll , The Christian Religion: An Enquiry

“Great, Alexia thought, I have gone from soul sucker to electrical ground. The epithets just get sweeter and sweeter.”
― Gail Carriger, Soulless

“I was ten when
Mike Smiley, half-Indian,
skinny, brown-skinned,

brought the word jigaboo
to school
like lunch, or the flu,

fed him by his adopted
white father who said
that's what we called

them then. By noon
it was done--everyone
had a name for what had been

bothering them, some
thing utterly human
as hate.”
― Kevin Young, Brown: Poems

“Like Rachel Dolezal, I too became black around the age of five. I first became a n----r at nine, so I had me a good run.”
― Kevin Young, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race

“I don't like the way our community throws the word around like it's water, because it's a derogatory term. A lot of times people come up to me and say, "What's up my nigger?" I'll respond, "Nah, wait a minute. What?" "Oh, oh, what's up my brother?" Sometimes you have to check people, because if it gets loose with us then white people will start to use it. I know a bunch of white people that started to get lax so I had to check them. Some black people were afraid to check them because they thought it was cool. You can never turn that word around and make it cool Nigger is just derogatory, it's wrong, and it's a fucked up term. It's not a word of love, Yo, what's up my nigger?" Fuck that. You can't turn the word puss around. Go around and say, "What's up pussy" to a brother. He'll try to kill you. "What's up dickhead?" You can't turn that around, so you can't turn nigger around as hard as you try.”
― Chuck D, Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary, Vol. 1

“This is one of many expressions which, colourless and even meaningless at first, have been developed into recognized terms of abuse by sloppy writers, prejudiced thinkers and powerful evangelists. The ordinary reasonable man has been trained to shudder away from a 'reactionary' as he does from a 'vested interest', though he may have no clear notion of the nature of either.
"What is a Reactionary?”
― A.P. Herbert, More Uncommon Law