Dehumanization Quotes

“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.”
― Audre Lorde

“He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible, only dehumanized.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

“Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.”
― Audre Lorde

“But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“The human need to be visible is countered by the need to be invisible to avoid further abuse, and the need for intimacy and the dread of abuse, all pose insoluble dichotomies which promote further withdrawal from human contact, which reinforces the sense of dehumanisation.”
― Christiane Sanderson, Introduction to Counselling Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma

“On the Bigotry of Culture:
: it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing.”
― José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature

“While we can all accept that bullying and abuse betray a lack or loss of respect for other human beings, there is a deeper issue: the devaluing of human life; and that in turn indicates a lack or loss of respect for the Giver of human life and dignity, God Himself. The message a bully sends is a mockery of God's handiwork, a lie that slanders God's nature and negates His love for us.”
― Frank E. Peretti, The Wounded Spirit

“It is harder to dehumanize a single individual that you have gotten the chance to know. Which is why people and groups who seek power and division do not bother with dehumanizing and individual. Better to attach a stigma a taint of pollution to an entire group.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“It is not uncommon for some Christians who are privately affirming to decide that they can work for "change from within” without publicly acknowledging that belief. The result is that this allows (even suggests to) others that they share their unaffirming position. After all, it is the default position more Christians hold. It communicates the same thing to 2SLGBTQIA+ people as well.

The problem with this is that, despite their privately affirming beliefs, their advocacy is functionally predicated on the dehumanizing ideas and postures that are demonstrably harmful. By default it supports the status quo of oppression rather than actively challenging and changing it. Put simply, for their advocacy to work in the way they hope, they have to give tacit endorsement to dehumanizing and oppressive belief, practices, and systems.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“The power of language to color one's view of reality is profound. In many instances, the most significant factor determining how an object will be perceived is not the nature of the object itself, but the words employed to characterize it. Operating through the lenses of contrasting linguistic symbols, two persons looking at the same phenomenon are likely to come up with sharply divergent observations. Words can also act as a force for justice or a weapon of repression, an instrument of enlightenment or a source of darkness.”
― Rachel M. MacNair, Consistently Opposing Killing: From Abortion to Assisted Suicide, the Death Penalty, and War

“The ultimate form of dehumanization is not to reduce humans to the rank of animals, but to elevate animals to the rank of humans; the ultimate form of depersonalization is not to take away the personhood of subjects, but to give personhood to objects; and the ultimate form of demoralization is not to lower morality to the level of caprice, but to raise caprice to the level of morality.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“How hard they work to define the slave as inhuman, savage, when in fact the definition of the inhuman describes overwhelmingly the punisher. When they rest, exhausted, between bouts of lashing, the punishment is more sadistic than corrective. If sustained whipping tires the lasher, and he or she must take a series of breaks before continuing, what good does its duration do to the whipped? Such extreme pain seems to be designed for the pleasure of the one with the lash. The necessity of rendering the slave a foreign species appears to be a desperate attempt to confirm one’s own self as normal. The urgency of distinguishing between those who belong to the human race and those who are decidedly non-human is so powerful the spotlight turns away and shines not on the object of degradation but on its creator. Even assuming exaggeration by the slaves, the sensibility of slave owners is gothic. It’s as though they are shouting, “I am not a beast! I’m not a beast! I torture the helpless to prove I am not weak.” The danger of sympathizing with the stranger is the possibility of becoming a stranger. To lose one’s racial-ized rank is to lose one’s own valued and enshrined difference.”
― Toni Morrison, The Origin of Others

“Linguistic reduction of victims to an insignificant, despicable, or dangerous level helps stimulate the kind of destructive thinking that leads ultimately to destructive actions. The victims are cast in such a negative or inconsequential light that whatever is done to them, no matter how horrendous, is considered perfectly justifiable.”
― Rachel M. MacNair, Consistently Opposing Killing: From Abortion to Assisted Suicide, the Death Penalty, and War

“When the first atomic bomb was exploded successfully, Oppenheimer and Fermi flashed the code word: Baby satisfactorily born. A most befitting yell o triumph for the coming of age of technological civilization and for the death of culture. Since then hundreds of thousands of babies were satisfactorily born with defective genes or died of leukemia brought on by radiation. Compulsive creation, genius, what the hell do you want, clap censorship on science?”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Perhaps it is this attitude, this mental turning away, or perhaps the combination of all these responses to calamity brought upon others, that one of Saul Bellow's characters, Artur Sammler, a survivor of the shooting pits in Poland, has in mind when he says: 'I know now that humankind marks certain people for death. Against them there shuts a door”
― Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust

“Throughout this conversation, it’s important to remember that you’re communicating with a real human being — a person with feelings, stories, history, trauma, heart, and the same needs as you to be heard, understood, and most importantly, respected. Kashdan said that the now-common, overused practice of labeling people as narcissists, gaslighters, and toxic can make us dehumanize other people, especially when their opinions don’t reflect our values.

That’s why it’s important to listen to others and understand their point of view. Humans have the ability to change and improve themselves. Minson highlights that when we see that potential in those we disagree with, we’re likely to engage with them more effectively. It’s important to avoid seeing people as “good” or “bad.” This will help you extend some grace and empathy to the other person.”
― Evelyn Nam

“Because they watch (us). They're taught how to, from school. They are taught to view our bodies (selves) as objects.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“who is more barbaric? The alleged cannibalistic savages, who at least waited until their victims were dead before they cooked and ate them? Or the European slave traders who thrived on live meat, that is, the exploitation of these human 'animals'?”
― Samantha Hurn, Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions

“[W]ho is more barbaric? The alleged cannibalistic savages, who at least waited until their victims were dead before they cooked and ate them? Or the European slave traders who thrived on live meat, that is, the exploitation of these human 'animals'?”
― Samantha Hurn, Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions

“Paradoxically, they needed Indians to be Indians at the same time they needed to define all that was Indian as inferior and in need of Spanish domination.”
― Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

“...my worry is that this polarization, along with more and more dependance on virtual reality, prevents us from connecting with other human beings and with the real world. This lack of connection dehumanizes not just others but also ourselves.”
― Azar Nafisi, Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

“Increasing policing and government programs an teaching women how to be safe is not going to correct this situation. Only understanding and a commitment to telling the truth about the cruelty inflicted on our women in the name of settling this country would help change peoples’ perceptions, end their complacency, and stop the continued brutalization and dehumanization of our women.”
― Michelle Good, Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada

“Mass movements use irrationality to shut out the intellect, to turn people into predictable, mindless machines. Both Stalin and Hitler used blind faith as a device for mechanizing souls. (11)”
― Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

“I was lost and would remain lost and all I could expect was to survive. So I had made decisions like someone who wasn't a person, who just wanted to survive.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Borne

“The progress and comfort have multiplied men. To the point of reducing them to numbers, the billions.”
― Raydrich Rocha, Consciência: Delírios e Galopes

“O progresso e o conforto multiplicaram os homens. Multiplicaram a ponto de serem reduzidos a números, os bilhões.”
― Raydrich Rocha, Consciência: Delírios e Galopes

“I was something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers-not the defined”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up.”
― Toni Morrison

“It scarcely surprised him that he had become so inconsiderate of the others; earlier on, his considerateness had been a source of pride.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis