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Prejudice Quotes

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Prejudice Quotes

“Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.”

Mind Littles Belief Grows History Mass Prejudice Ancient Spread Spots Novelty Patches Stains Grease

Book:Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth

Source: Pragmatism and the Conception of Thruth

“Because history is only an aggregate of personal hostilities, personal prejudices, personal blindness and irrationality, there are times when we have to live against it.”

History Prejudice Blindness Hostility Irrationality

Author:Anais Nin

“There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow.”

Long Ends Grows Causes History Tree Racism Prejudice Greed Wave Distrust Curves Racial Prejudice Internment Oscillation

Book:Heart Mountain: A Novel

Source: Heart Mountain: A Novel

“It was the fashion of the times to attribute every remarkable event to the particular will of the Deity; the alterations of nature were connected, by an invisible chain, with the moral and metaphysical opinions of the human mind; and the most sagacious divines could distinguish, according to the colour of their respective prejudices, that the establishment of heresy tended to produce an earthquake, or that a deluge was the inevitable consequence of the progress of sin and error.”

Source: THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes): From the Height of the Roman Empire, the Age of Trajan and the Antonines - to the Fall of Byzantium; Including a Review of the Crusades, and the State of Rome during the Middle Ages

“The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages.”

Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: A.D. 395 to A.D. 1185 (A Modern Library E-Book)

“It is important to note that multiculturalism does not share the postmodernist stance. Its passions are political; its assumptionsempirical; its conception of identities visceral. For it, there is no doubting that history is something that happened and that those happenings have left their mark within our collective consciousness. History for multiculturalists is not a succession of dissolving texts, but a tense tangle of past actions that have reshaped the landscape, distributed the nation's wealth, established boundaries, engendered prejudices, and unleashed energies.”

“From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.”

Men Passion History Prejudice Metaphysical

Book:Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948

Source: Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948

“The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”

History Written Sad Prejudice Historical Discrimination Ink World History Fluid Racial Prejudice History Of Life Racism And Prejudice Writing History Written History

Book:Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend

Source: Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend

“What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.”

Source: Negro Makers of History

“The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation.”

Writing Given Interest History Generations Prejudice Historiography Writing History

Author:John Hope Franklin

“Continue to instruct the world; and - whilst we carry on a poor unequal conflict with the passions and prejudices of our day, perhaps with no better weapons than other passions and prejudices of our own - convey wisdom to future generations.”

World Passion Poor History Generations Conflict Weapons Prejudice Future Generation

Book:The works and correspondence of...Edmund Burke

Source: The works and correspondence of...Edmund Burke

“When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. The reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices.”

Made Order Differences Steps History Written Diversity Pages Prejudice Safety Angry Rewards Tolerance Dust Settling Privacy Intolerance Defenders Prevailing Religious Tolerance

Author:John Shelby Spong

“Without the changed conditions, the product of a lost war, a revolution and a pervasive sense of national humiliation, Hitler would have remained a nobody. His main ability by far, as he came to realise during the course of 1919, was that in the prevailing circumstances he could inspire an audience which shared his basic political feelings, by the way he spoke, by the force of his rhetoric, by the very power of his prejudice, by the conviction he conveyed that there was a way out of Germany's plight.”

“Hitler's oratory moved people and appealed to their hopes and dreams. But his speeches malevolently twisted hope into some gnarled ghastly entities, and appealed to the latent, darkest prejudices of Germans.”

People Dream History Speech Prejudice Moved Entity Twisted Nazism Hopes And Dreams Latent Nazi Germany Ghastly Oratory

Book:The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the Twenty-First Century

Source: The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the Twenty-First Century

“History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice.”

History Prejudice Guessing Second Guessing

Author:Will Durant

“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might say—about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, 'roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.' We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.”

Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Through most of human history, our ancestors had children shortly after puberty, just as the members of all nonhuman species do to this day. Whether we like the idea or not, our young ancestors must have been capable of providing for their offspring, defending their families from predators, cooperating with others, and in most other respects functioning fully as adults. If they couldn't function as adults, their young could not have survived, which would have meant the swift demise of the human race. The fact that we're still here suggests that most young people are probably far more capable than we think they are. Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of – and buried – the potential of our teens.”

“The most obvious and the most distinctive features of the History of Civilisation, during the last fifty years, is the wonderful increase of industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, accompanied by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of locomotion and intercommunication. By this rapid and vast multiplication of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the general standard of comfort has been raised, the ravages of pestilence and famine have been checked, and the natural obstacles, which time and space offer to mutual intercourse, have been reduced in a manner, and to an extent, unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal of local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces of the organisation of the commonwealth against those of political or social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on the present and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of which may be divined, but cannot, as yet, be estimated at its full value.”

Source: Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The