Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Prejudice

Miserable creatures, thrown for a moment on the surface of this little pile of mud, is it decreed that one half of the flock should be the persecutor of the other? Is it for you, mankind, to pronounce on what is good and what is evil?
Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Writer

You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.
Charlotte Bronte (1816–1855) English Novelist, Poet

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
Frederick II of Prussia (1712–86) Prussian Monarch

Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor.
Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
Richard Nixon (1913–94) American Head of State, Lawyer

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet

America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American Novelist

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist

Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Critic

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.
Harper Lee (1926–2016) American Novelist

Instead of casting away our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason because we suspect that in this stock each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themseive of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.
Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman

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 (1800–91) American Historian, Politician

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer

Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist

Prejudices are the principles of people we dislike.
Dero A. Saunders (1914–2002) American Journalist, Scholar

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

I’m quite sure that … I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for me he can’t be any worse.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist

To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) English Historian, Essayist, Philanthropist

Every one is forward to complain of the prejudices that mislead other men and parties, as if he were free, and had none of his own. What now is the cure? No other but this, that every man should let alone others’ prejudices and examine his own.
John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher, Physician

Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same. Prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) American Nationalist, Author, Pamphleteer, Radical, Inventor

None are too wise to be mistaken, but few are so wisely just as to acknowledge and correct their mistakes, and especially the mistakes of prejudice.
Isaac Barrow

Because a total eclipse of the sun is above my own head, I will not therefore insist that there must be an eclipse in America also; and because snowflakes fall before my own nose, I need not believe that the Gold Coast is also snowed up.
Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist

If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.
Michel Foucault (1926–84) French Philosopher, Critic, Historian

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they can scarcely trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) English Writer, Feminist

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious, as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) Scottish Judge, Literary Critic

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.
Hebrew Proverb

I wander if there really is a brave man with a really good imagination? If hypocrisy was destructive to the environment the world would have ended a long, long time ago.
Unknown

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