quotations about prejudice
I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.
ROD SERLING
Los Angeles Times, 1967
You deny that man is really so prejudiced as I suppose him; talk to him then of some foreign country, ask him what religion he is of.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Prejudice is a disease. And when they come for you, or refuse your worth, I will be ready for their stones.
LADY GAGA
Twitter post, June 7, 2010
We are all God's people. We are prejudiced and we separate into Jews, Mexicans, Italians, but God doesn't see colors.
MUHAMMAD ALI
"New Again: Muhammad Ali", Interview Magazine
Any pattern of belief which is formed as a result of an unthinking or conditioning process may be called prejudice. All such beliefs are unreasoned; not all of them, however, are unreasonable.
H. GORDON HULLFISH & PHILIP G. SMITH
Reflective Thinking: The Method of Education
Prejudices may be somewhat rectified by age, and by converse with the world, but they flourish in full vigour in youthful minds, reared in seclusion and privacy, and undisciplined by intercourse with various classes of mankind.
C. B. BROWN
attributed, Day's Collacon
PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Would You Slap Your Father?
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, "The Universe and Dr. Einstein", Harper's Magazine, May 1948
Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.
MICHAEL CRICHTON
State of Fear
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile or On Education
The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.
GEORGE BANCROFT
Literary and Historical Miscellanies
We talk of early prejudices, of the prejudices of religion, of position, of education; but in truth we only mean the prejudices of others. It is by the observation of trivial matters that the wise learn the influence of prejudice over their own minds at all times, and the wonderfully moulding power which those minds possess in making all things around conform to the idea of the moment. Let a man but note how often he has seen likenesses where no resemblance exists; admired ordinary pictures, because he thought they were from the hands of celebrated masters; delighted in the commonplace observations of those who had gained a reputation for wisdom; laughed where no wit was; and he will learn with humility to make allowance for the effect of prejudice in others.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
GORE VIDAL
"Sex and the Law", Homage to Daniel Shays
By death prejudice is annihilated.
GEORGE BANCROFT
Literary and Historical Miscellanies
We are involved so early in the prejudices of so many whose interest is concerned to communicate them to us, that it becomes extremely difficult to distinguish through the rest of life what is natural to us and what is artificial.
ST. PIERRE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Undoubtedly it is our duty, and for our best good, that we occupy and improve the faculties, with which our creator has endowed us, but so far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly.
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
It is difficult for an individual to decide--as he might decide some morning, say, not to shave--to be rational (reasonable) rather than to remain prejudiced. Prejudices are rooted in such deep feelings that it does not occur to us to question them.
H. GORDON HULLFISH & PHILIP G. SMITH
Reflective Thinking: The Method of Education
The cultural environment which gives rise to prejudices does not usually provide the conditions that call them into question. The cultural mind ... is often closed; it may always be closed on specific beliefs.
H. GORDON HULLFISH & PHILIP G. SMITH
Reflective Thinking: The Method of Education
The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.
HENRY ST. JOHN BOLINGBROKE
Letters on the Study and Use of History