<= Previous | January Issues Index | Next =>
Quotes of the Day for 28 January 2005 - Prejudice

On this day in 1852 the abolitionist orator Wendell Phillips said, "There is nothing stronger than human prejudice." The strength of prejudice was shown again on this day in 1916 when the Jewish legal scholar Louis Demholtz Brandeis was named to the US Supreme Court, generating frantic outcries from many quarters. The root concept means deciding things in advance, and can be quite useful in many ways. Tomorrow I will wash my hair before I brush it, a sequence I find more functional than the reverse, and it's a decision I don't need to make every day. But making too many decisions in advance, and therefore without access to all the facts, can be extremely dangerous - particularly when those prejudices are shared by many and examined by none.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.
     - Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

Prejudice, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
     - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1881 - 1906

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 Brontė, 1816 - 1855

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
     - Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862

To prejudge other's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness, but to put out our own eyes.
     - John Locke, 1632 - 1704

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
     - William James, 1842 - 1910

Would you like to see quotes like these in your mail tomorrow morning? Our 10,000 loyal subscribers hate to miss a day, perhaps you should sign up now! No cost or obligation, just be open to the enlightenment waiting for you among our 22,500+ quotes.