quotations about prejudice
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
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
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
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
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
PREJUDICE, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, "The Universe and Dr. Einstein", Harper's Magazine, May 1948
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
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
GORE VIDAL
"Sex and the Law", Homage to Daniel Shays
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
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
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
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
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
I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Emile or On Education
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?
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
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
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
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