quotations about prejudice
The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
KATE CHOPIN
The Awakening
Arguments do not erase prejudice any more than arguments erase scars, whether psychological or physical.
GERRY L. SPENCE
How to Argue and Win Every Time
Prejudice is a mist, which in our journey through the world often dims the brightest and obscures the best of all the good and glorious objects that meet us on our way.
ANTHONY ASTLEY COOPER
attributed, Day's Collacon
The fact is, that no man, whatever his system may be, refrains from instilling prejudices into his child in any matter he has much at heart.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Men often prove the violence of their own prejudices, even by the violence with which they attack the prejudices of other people.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
If we would indicate an idea which, throughout the whole course of history, has ever more and more widely extended its empire, or which, more than any other, testifies to the much-contested and still more decidedly misunderstood perfectibility of the whole human race, it is that of establishing our common humanity -- of striving to remove the barriers which prejudice and limited views of every kind have erected among men, and to treat all mankind, without reference to religion, nation, or color, as one fraternity, one great community, fitted for the attainment of one object, the unrestrained development of the physical powers. This is the ultimate and highest aim of society.
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
Kosmos
All prejudices are obstinate, like diseases of chronic tenacity, and require radical cures.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
In this world the only opinion that holds court is prejudice.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
A fish will sometimes with pleasure rise out of his element, and spring into ours: so a man will sometimes with pleasure rise from prejudice and falsehood, into the sphere of reason and truth. But the fish will most naturally and joyfully dive again into his element of water; and the man as joyfully and naturally into his element of prejudice and falsehood.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Prejudices, my Lord, is an equivocal term, and may as well mean right opinions taken upon trust and deeply rooted in the mind, as false and absurd opinions so derived and grown into it.
RICHARD HURD
Dialogues on the Uses of Foreign Travel
You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
When we destroy an old prejudice, we have need of a new virtue.
ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE DE STAËL
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Men's prejudices rest upon their character for the time being and cannot be overcome, as being part and parcel of themselves. Neither evidence nor common sense nor reason has the slightest influence upon them.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
I know the cause of all human disappointment -- worldly prejudice.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, December 23, 1810
Prejudice has always a neutralizing power; in whatever mind it dwells it acts in relation to truth as alkali in relation to acids, neutralizing its very power; arguments the most cogent, discourses the most powerful, can be neutralized at once by some prejudice in the mind.
DAVID THOMAS
The Homilist; or, The Pulpit for the People
I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit.
ULYSSES S. GRANT
letter to Isaac N. Morris, September 14, 1868
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices--just recognize them.
EDWARD R. MURROW
attributed, Living Thoughts: inspiration, insight, and wisdom from sources throughout the ages
Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.
RUSSELL KIRK
The Conservative Mind
The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Parerga and Paralipomena
Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France