Political correctness (often abbreviated "PC") is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, ethnic, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and doing so to an excessive extent.
Quotes
- ‘Politically Correct’ was originally a phrase on the Leninist left to denote someone who steadfastly toed the party line. Then it evolved into ‘PC’, an ironic phrase among wised up leftists to denote someone whose line-toeing fervour was too much to bear. Only in connection with the PC debate itself did the phrase get picked up by people who had no fidelity to radicalism at all, but who relished the nasty syllables for their twist of irony.
- Paul Berman, "Introduction", in Debating PC: The Debate over Political Correctness on College Campuses (New York 1992), p. 5.
- The phenomenon we know as political correctness thrives on people's permitting themselves to be intimidated by the people who are the enforcers of these norms and orthodoxies.
- Robert P. George, interview with Bill Kristol (April 2016), transcript
- Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this.
- Doris Lessing The Sunday Times, London (10 May 1992)
- It is an article of passionate faith among 'politically correct' biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway.
- Richard Dawkins, in The Economist, Vol. 328 (1993)
- Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.
- Doris Lessing, "Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism", in Our Country, Our Culture - The Politics of Political Correctness (1994), Partisan Review Press, edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Philips
- I am politically incorrect, that's true. Political correctness to me is just intellectual terrorism. I find that really scary, and I won't be intimidated into changing my mind. Everyone isn't going to love you all the time.
- Mel Gibson, as quoted in interview with Roald Rynning in Film Review (January 1997), p. 37
- Political correctness is tyranny with manners.
- Charlton Heston, speech at the Harvard Law School (1999), as quoted in "Appreciation : Charlton Heston" in TIME magazine (6 April 2008)
- Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
- Theodore Dalrymple (pen name of Anthony Daniels), Frontpage Magazine interview[dead link] (August 31, 2005).
- Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism. . . . What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism — by levelling the charge of "political correctness" against its exponents — they could discredit the whole political project.
- It really worries me that 84% of this audience agrees with that statement, because the kind of people that say "political correctness gone mad" are usually using that phrase as a kind of cover action to attack minorities or people that they disagree with. I'm of an age that I can see what a difference political correctness has made. When I was four years old, my grandfather drove me around Birmingham, where the Tories had just fought an election campaign saying, "if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour," and he drove me around saying, "this is where all the niggers and the coons and the jungle bunnies live." And I remember being at school in the early 80s and my teacher, when he read the register, instead of saying the name of the one Asian boy in the class, he would say, "is the black spot in," right? And all these things have gradually been eroded by political correctness, which seems to me to be about an institutionalised politeness at its worst. And if there is some fallout from this, which means that someone in an office might get in trouble one day for saying something that someone was a bit unsure about because they couldn't decide whether it was sexist or homophobic or racist, it's a small price to pay for the massive benefits and improvements in the quality of life for millions of people that political correctness has made. It's a complete lie that allows the right, which basically controls media now, and national politics, to make people on the left who are concerned about the way people are represented look like killjoys. And I'm sick, I'm really sick — 84% of you in this room that have agreed with this phrase, you're like those people who turn around and go, "you know who the most oppressed minorities in Britain are? White, middle-class men." You're a bunch of idiots.
- Stewart Lee, in Heresy, BBC Radio 4 (16 May 2007)
- The modern academics find it politically incorrect to criticize the devastation under Islamic rule, even though post-colonial scholars have amply exposed the ruin created by the British.
- Rajiv Malhotra, Indra's Net (2014)
- We'll be right back to the politically correct program called "The Good, the Bad, and the Beauty Impaired."
- The term "political correctness" has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's "Thought Police" and fascist regimes.
- Helmut Newton, in American Photo (January/February 2000), p. 90
- But is it really necessary, in 1947, to teach children to use expressions like "native" and "Chinaman"?
- The last-named word has been regarded as offensive by the Chinese for at least a dozen years. As for “native,” it was being officially discountenanced even in India as long as twenty years ago.
- It is no use answering that it is childish for an Indian or an African to feel insulted when he is called a “native.” We all have these feelings in one form or another. If a Chinese wants to be called a Chinese and not a Chinaman, if a Scotsman objects to be called a Scotchman, or if a Negro demands his capital N, it is only the most ordinary politeness to do what is asked of one.
- Need I remind you that Stone Mountain and Birth of a Nation are also exercises in political correctness for their time, as are the inscriptions on the monuments erected by several southern states in honor of the service of their state’s Confederate forces at Gettysburg? ... Ranting about “political correctness” is best read as “I can’t really deal with the merits of your interpretation, so I’ll deride it largely because it doesn’t reinforce my own preferences and prejudices.”
- Brooks D. Simpson, "Erasing History? Monuments and Memory" (10 January 2016), Crossroads, WordPress
- If I could believe that this was said sincerely, I could put up with anything.
- We have now reached the point where every goon with a grievance, every bitter bigot, merely has to place the prefix, 'I know this is not politically correct, but...' in front of the usual string of insults in order to be not just safe from criticism, but actually a card, a lad, even a hero. Conversely, to talk about poverty and inequality, to draw attention to the reality that discrimination and injustice are still facts of life, is to commit the sin of political correctness. Anti-PC has become the latest cover for creeps. It is a godsend for every curmudgeon and crank, from fascists to the merely smug.
- Fintan O'Toole, The Irish Times, 5th May 1994
- Immoral (definition): Obsolete expression meaning "politically incorrect".
- Richard Summerbell, Abnormally Happy: A Gay Dictionary (1985)
- These "disguises" make us look like those politically-correct, multi-ethnic gangs that only rob people in bad TV shows.
- Brian K. Vaughan, in Runaways, 1.7 : Teenage Wasteland
- [...] secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff.
- Clint Eastwood, in Michael Hainey, Clint and Scott Eastwood: No Holds Barred in Their First Interview Together, Esquire.com, August 3, 2016
- Political correctness is the enemy of freedom because it rejects honesty and authenticity. We have to tackle it as the distortion of the truth.
- Mario Vargas Llosa, interview, El País, 27/02/2018
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