Quotes about prejudice

Fear is differentit remainsit causes prejudice.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

There will always be haters. And the more you grow the more they hate the more they hate the more you grow.

Bigotry or prejudice in any form is more than a problem it is a deep-seated evil within our society.

I had brought from Paris the national prejudice against Italian music but I had also received from nature that acute sensibility against which prejudices are powerless. I soon contracted the passion it inspires in all those born to understand it.

The nationalist regrets the change an ill-founded belief in the merits of purity blinds him to the virtues of the foreign and the hybrid.

...there is nothing so dangerous in its consequences as injustice to individuals- whether it arise from prejudice of color or from any other source that a wrong done to one man is a wrong to society and to the world.

It's only his outside a man can be honest in any sort of skin.

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices and his pretension itself is a very great prejudice.

Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.

People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.

While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life and are prisoners to what we cannot understand. We can recognize only a small fragment of our own, and an even smaller fragment of anyone else's, impetus.

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.

Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.

Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.

There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't.

My dad always says, some people will treat you badly and you can't help that. But how you handle it and how it makes you feel, that's up to you.

When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.

There is but one supremacy... and it remains known and unknown to it's human creation... of many hues, shapes and sizes.

Bernie believed in God. He believed that God wanted people to enjoy life to the fullest, not drench themselves in aversion and prejudice.

When the mind is without fear and prejudice, and the head is held high with the strength of reasoning, then only the brightest rays of religion can penetrate the darkest corners of the human society.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

You can't dwell on what might have been...and it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done.

He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets — most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth.

The question has often been asked; Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? It does not matter what you call it. Buddhism remains what it is whatever label you may put on it. The label is immaterial. Even the label 'Buddhism' which we give to the teachings of the Buddha is of little importance. The name one gives is inessential.... In the same way Truth needs no label: it is neither Buddhist, Christian, Hindu nor Moslem. It is not the monopoly of anybody. Sectarian labels are a hindrance to the i

It's not at all hard to understand a person it's only hard to listen without bias.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

Love is too precious to be ashamed of.

How you look at it is pretty much how you'll see it

Ignorance as a deliberate choice, can be used to reinforce prejudice and discrimination.

The intruders spoke no words as they rushed in. Five boys carrying baseball bats and tire irons. They wore an assortment of Halloween masks and stocking masks.But Derek knew who they were.“No! No!” he cried.All five boys wore bulky shooter’s earmuffs. They couldn’t hear him. But more importantly, they couldn’t hear Jill.One of the boys stayed in the doorway. He was in charge. A runty kid named Hank. The stocking pulled down over his face smashed his features into Play-Doh, but it could only be H

Prejudice is a disease. And when they come for you, or refuse your worth, I will be ready for their stones. I belong to you.

The Monster Ball is by nature a protest: A youth church experience to speak out and celebrate against all forms of discrimination + prejudice.

People who insist on dividing the world into 'Us' and 'Them' never contemplate that they may be someone else's 'Them'.

Fat-bashing in all its varied forms–criticism, exclusion, shaming, fat talk, self-deprecation, jokes, gossip, bullying–is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice. From a very young age, before they can walk away or defend themselves, women are taught that they are how they look, not what they do or what they know. (1)

As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance.

It is not enough for a population or a section of the population to have Christian faith and be docile to the ministers of religion in order to be in a position properly to judge political matters. If this population has no political experience, no taste for seeing clearly for itself nor a tradition of initiative and critical judgment, its position with respect to politics grows more complicated, for nothing is easier for political counterfeiters than to exploit good principles for purposes of d

Everyone is familiar with the slogan "The personal is political" -- not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We oftentimes do the work of the state in and through our interior lives. What we often assume belongs most intimately to ourselves and to our emotional life has been produced elsewhere and has been recruited to do the work of racism and repression.

Is human dignity and human life so cheap that the rights protecting it can be traded away to appease the appetite for intimidation and prejudice of a vicious and self-centered group - for whatever reason, power, politics, nationalism, or unity?

Everybody means by an open mind, a mind which contains their prejudices but not somebody else's.

But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of any other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than the manufacturer who set up belated foundations with the money he made by handing bombs and guns to suicidal nationalists? Is he worse than the di

Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'obj

For you know that any evil spoken of women so generally only hurts those who say it, not women themselves.

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues.

Racist legacy laws and modern racist practices are all part of the same system, and it needs to be changed now.

We give people political labels, sexual labels, and religious labels. But in the process, we strip them of their individuality and complexity. Prejudice is pre-judging. It's assuming that bad stories end badly, but Jesus is in the business of turning bad beginnings into happily ever afters....God cannot give up on you. It's not in His nature. His goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life. All you have to do is turn around. All you have to do is crash the party!

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

When did the very first case of racism even occur? When did such blind hatred devour the souls of men and make them turn on their own brothers and sisters? What ever taught them that it was normal to be such monsters?

... once you start demonizing groups of people, when you make them the other, you can justify doing just about anything you want to the, can't you? Look at history if you don't believe me.

I have always believed there is great value in studying the flaws of mankind and men —even fictional characters. All of us are flawed. All of us are diminished by some form of prejudice and bias. If a fictional character is to be realistic, he must struggle with imperfections and weaknesses.

Humanity smacks me the taste of human psyche and prejudice, being part of human nature. Humans believe that they have a right to decide on behalf of all creatures and make laws for them. Love is more preferred word to replace humanity, it incorporates feelings of all creatures in comparison to humanity, which is only humane.

Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we'd all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn't be even a single great man.

Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or cultural wealth. This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in t

The dangerous enemies of your species are fundamentalism, intolerance, separatism, extremism, hostility and prejudicial fear, be it religious, atheistic or political.

One way or another, all humans are superstitious.

President-elect Lincoln to his confidants: "The people of the South do not know us. They are not allowed to receive Republican papers down there.

Tragedy cleans the windows of the soul by washing away the bias of our lives in the detergent of pain.

Been under treatment for PTSD and bipolar since 1992. I’m not ashamed of my illness. I’ve been shunned by many and I feel for those shunned, too.

Only when we learn to value the differences among us can we achieve the true spirit of humanity.

...when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. 'The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.' 

Raging crime, class warfare, invasive immigrants, light morals, public misbehavior. Always we convince ourselves that the parade of unwelcome and despised is a new phenomenon, which is why the phrase "the good old days" has passed from cliché to self-parody.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we ca

Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie.

A cricketer who hits a century in one match may score zero in the next, if he does not have the same outfit, shoes and bat that he used in the first match. In fact, many sportsmen keep some kind of talisman in their pocket that acts as a lucky charm for their game. Here the talisman or the outfit doesn’t possess any magical power that helps the player to perform better. But it is their own subconscious reliance on the charm, that makes them give their best.

In terms of sex between same-sex partners, the objection that "the parts don't fit" doesn’t make sense on even the most logical level. If the parts didn't work together, frankly, people wouldn't be putting them together.

Porn is in the eye of the beholder.

We pass hatred and prejudice on to our children, as though they were heirlooms of humanity. We cling to traditions that keep us bound to a way of life that no longer works and arguably never has. Those who can glean the wisdom of the old traditions, but put away the ignorance and prejudices interwoven into them by the generations to come before, have always played a vital role in our global community; though their actions are usually met with resistance. We—all of us—must be assured that change

...she cried because prejudice outlives passion and because she was sentimentally patriotic.

So weak are their [Men's] intellectuals, and so untuned are their organs to the voice of reason, that custom makes more absolute slaves of their senses than they can make of us. They are so accustom'd to see things as they now are, that they cannot represent to themselves how they can be otherwise. It wou'd be extremely odd they think to see a Woman at the head of an army giving battle, or at the helm of a nation giving laws; pleading causes in quality of counsel; administring justice in a court

the many absurd notions the Men are led into by custom: Tho' there is none more absurd, than that of the great difference they make between their own sex and ours. Yet it must be own'd that there is not any vulgar error more antient or universal. For the learned and illiterate alike are prepossest with the opinion that Men are really superior to Women, and that the dependence we now are in, is the very state which nature pointed out for us.

The true call of liberation of women is not in taking off their clothes, but taking off their prejudices.

We look at each other a second. " I'm tired of the rules," I say. Aibileen chuckles and looks out the window. I realise how thin this revelation must sound to her.

[O]ne person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing.

Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor

Two people pass each other. As one looks upon the other's skin color, the other is looking back at their appearance. Both justifying, how better and righteous they are, in their own insecurities.

A civilization is built upon the edifice of genuine human minds, not the primitive and deluded minds of barbarian apes, who in most cases read one book of opinions written hundreds or thousands of years ago and think that they have factual answers to all the questions in the world.

Choose your friends and mates, not by the money in their bank account, creed, ethnicity, or color; instead, choose character, actions, heart, and soul. When we bleed, we bleed the same color.

Abraham had eight sons--not one. All eight sons bring something to the table. Abraham loved all of his sons. He was a good father who made sure all his sons were literate, of good character and shared a common ideology with their father, Abraham. Abraham did good. Where did we go wrong?pg 54

Why should each generation be brought up on the selective prejudices of the one before it? I believe that this is exactly the point of history. And not just reading or studying history but also approaching it with a sceptical bent of mind. When each generation approaches received wisdom with scepticism, perhaps it will reassess established notions of right and wrong, love and hate. Perhaps it will finally see mistaken priorities for what they really are. Perhaps it will do something that previou

Experience is true, but not the lessons it teaches.

Embrace all emotions: sadness, happiness, sorrow, hate, love, prejudice, fear; they are weapons against our greatest enemy: indifference.

Why, when you have a mental disease, is it always considered an act of imagination? Why is it that every organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy except the brain?

I'll say it again - mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn't consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, "Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?" Let us shout it from the rooftops until everyone gets the message; depression has and nothing to do with having a bad day or being sad, it's a killer if not taken seriously.

It's so common, it could be anyone. The trouble is, nobody wants to talk about it. And that makes everything worse.

Morality is always prejudicial.

The denial of Christ has less to do with facts and more to do with the bent of what a person is prejudiced to conclude.

Books can make a difference in dispelling prejudice and building community: not with role models and recipes, not with noble messages about the human family, but with enthralling stories that make us imagine the lives of others. A good story lets you know people as individuals in all their particularity and conflict; and once you see someone as a person—flawed, complex, striving—you’ve reached beyond stereotype.

I can't bear literary snobbery.

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had cope

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.

...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out.

Actually, this is a poem my father once showed me, a long time ago. It has been bastardized many times, in many ways, but this is the original:The Cold Within Six men trapped by happenstance,in bleak and bitter coldEach possessed a stick of wood,or so the story's told. Their dying fire in need of logs,the first man held his back For of the faces round the fire,he noticed one was black. One man looking cross the way, saw one not of his churchAnd could not bring himself to givethe fire his stick o

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

Sometimes, the way around prejudice is education.

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds thatthe dorms and classrooms can'taccommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the sugg

The radical implication of the expansion of higher education has been disguised by a myth which dubs all educated working class people as middle class. By definition working class people are not intelligent, so if you've got a degree you must be middle class. This nonsense is reinforced by the fact that acedemic traditions are laden with class assumptions and are presented in upper class styles even in the Polytechnics.