Prejudice

“ But when the day dawned it seemed to show me again more plainly than ever the great wall of prejudice, built up on a foundation of lies, which surrounded a whole world of sorrows, griefs, injustices and crimes which must not be spoken of—no, not even in whispers—and which it seemed to me then that no human power could ever reach or remedy. ”

“ Like the rest of the world I prefer to await developments before committing myself on so delicate a matter. Why, Outhwaite, prejudice is as bad as the hangman! If I had settled positively in my own mind which of the three had emptied that phial of poison into the old gentleman's evening glass, I would not impart my convictions. ”

“ For what name could well be more full of evil memories and of evil omens than just this name of Prejudice? Just consider what prejudice is. Prejudice, when we stop over it and take it to pieces and look well at it,—prejudice is so bad and so abominable that you would not believe it could be so bad till you had looked at it and at how it acts in your own case. ”

“ Thus the bed-rid imagination of prejudice sees some dreadful catastrophe in 465every improvement, and no longer feeling the ground of custom under its feet, fancies itself on an abyss of ruin and lawless change. How truly has it been said of prejudice, ‘that it has the singular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible varieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here and there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like the spider, makes every where its home. ”

“ If benevolence to that worst part, be our motive, can we send them away from our liberty, and our light, and our laws, and our power, and our benevolence, to a foreign uncivilized and heathen land?
13. If gratification of prejudice be our motive, how much better is it, to yield to prejudice than to crucify it?—to flatter, than to give it no quarter?
14. If it be true, that every sinner must repent or perish, what must be the fate of those who strive to put away the annoyance produced by an evil, without repenting of the sin which produces it? ”

“ Your question, my dear girl, is not an easy one to answer, for moral philosophy does not know a more important one, or a more difficult one to decide; it is a lesson which lasts throughout life. I will tell you in a few words that we call prejudice every so-called duty for the existence of which we find no reason in nature. ”

“ Indolence, negligence, want of order and method, obstinacy, fickleness, rashness, credulity; these qualities were never esteemed by any one indifferent to a character; much less, extolled as accomplishments or virtues. The prejudice, resulting from them, immediately strikes our eye, and gives us the sentiment of pain and disapprobation. ”

“ After such wise, by turning the innocent word 'prejudice' into a weapon of attack against everything which restrained vice, crime, illicit pleasure, violence, and social profligacy—against whatever, in short, rationally deserves to be called prejudice—the human race plunged willingly and universally into a pitiable and apparently immedicable state of pure unvarnished prejudice. ”

“ Every paradox was to him a self-evident truth; every prejudice an undoubted absurdity. The weight of authority, the sanction of ages, the common consent of mankind, were vouchers only for ignorance, error, and imposture. ”

“ An erroneous principle once assumed has the power of misleading even the strongest and best informed minds, and of binding them in chains of iron. All history and experience prove this. Beware especially of the tyranny of prejudice, than which nothing is more certain to warp and distort the mind. Prejudice is the very cancer of the soul. ”

“ When you started out to win the favor of society, from which you had been alienated partly by misfortune, but largely through your own wrong action, there was no radical change in your character, or even in your controlling motives. You regretted the evil because of its immediate and disagreeable consequences. I do not excuse the world's harshness toward the erring; but, after all, if you can disabuse your mind of prejudice you will admit that its action is very natural, and would, probably, have been your own before you passed under this cloud. Consider what the world knows of you. ”

“ It is scarce credible, but that we see it, how violently and shamefully prejudice flies in the face of reason, and often gets the better of it, in instances too where reason seems to be strongest and most obvious. ”

“ If mere prejudice were dumb, as well as deaf and blind, it would not so much signify; but as it is, each sect, age, country, profession, individual, is ready to prove that they are exclusively in the right, and to go together by the ears for it. ‘Rings the earth with the vain stir?’ It is the trick for each party to raise an outcry against prejudice ”

“ We find that we have really been the offender, going about with a moral tape-measure graduated by ourselves, and measuring the opposite party with a serene conceit which has called itself principle or honor, or some high-sounding name, while it was really nothing but prejudice. ”

“ In your part of the country, gentlemen, that which we should naturally appeal to as the friend of order and stability—property—is blindly against us; prejudice is also against us; and we have nothing left to which we can appeal but human nature and the common privilege of manhood. ”

“ CXXXIII. We are only justified in rejecting prejudices, when we can explain the grounds of them; or when they are at war with nature, which is the strongest prejudice of all.
CXXXIV. Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority. Natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself. ”

“ The most common, and, perhaps, the most serious of vices is prejudice. It is a thing imbibed with one's mother's milk, fortified by all one's youthful surroundings, and only broken through, if at all, by experience of the world and a deliberate mental effort. ”

“ But though the many scarce use it all, and none so much as they ought; yet every man thinks he does, and never wants something which he calls reason, for the justification of his folly or wickedness. Prejudice or passion steps into its room, takes its name; and, under the appearance of reason, does things which reason abhors. And thus reason, as well as religion, is forced to furnish its enemies with arms against itself ”

“ They have not the feeling, because it is a creature of education and habit.
While we write, there are now playing at our right, a few steps away, a colored and a white child, with all the affection and harmony of feeling, as though prejudice had always been unknown.
Prejudice overlooks all that is noble and grand in man's being. ”

“ I know too well how men of your form of belief regard men of mine! I am not here either to combat a prejudice, or assert a right. I tell you, therefore, calmly and dispassionately, that no demand is made upon you. ”

“ A gentleman present, distinguished for logical acumen and subtlety, and who had devoted no small portion of the last twenty-five years to the study and elucidation of this very question, held the opposite view, that prejudice is innate and unconquerable. ”

“ Alas! alas! how tyrannical is the dominion of prejudice! in this instance it precipitated men, respectable men, who in the common occurrences of life, had uniformly preserved a decent reputation, upon a procedure the most absurd and unwarrantable. ”

“ I cannot hinder other mens thoughts, whom the noise and shew of piety, and heat of Reformation and Religion, might easily so fill with prejudice, that all equality and clearness of judgement might be obstructed. ”

“ Such are the ideas conveyed by the word prejudice; and I fearlessly ask you, is it a crime to impute to his Grace these notions which you yourselves entertain? Is he calumniated—is he libelled, when he is charged with concurring with you, gentlemen of the jury? Will you, by a verdict of conviction, stamp your own political sentiments with the seal of reprobation? If you convict my client, you do this; you decide that it is a libel to charge any man with those doctrines which are so useful to you individually, and of which you boast ”

“ True learning and prejudices cannot subsist together; and therefore, though in societies of pedants, little else is to be found but prejudices, bitterness, ignorance, and ill-breeding; I am amazed to hear, that in societies of gentlemen, formed for the promoting of knowledge, and liberty of enquiry, a province utterly inconsistent with the narrow spirit of prejudice, there are yet found instances of the greatest. ”

“ But as I wish to shape my objections into a tangible form, allow me to say that the introduction and exposure on the stage of any person making pretensions to elevated piety is, of itself, an objectionable feature, and more calculated to excite prejudice against all professions of religion, than to induce the hypocrite to throw off the mask. ”

“ All I say is, that they are mistaken; they are labouring under a wrong impression, and at the same time I am under the impression that their judgment is warped by a strong amount of prejudice, which, perhaps very naturally, has influenced them in so marked a degree. ”

“ You speak much of pre-possession and prejudice; beware you are not entangled therein yourselves. Are you not prejudiced against us, because we believe and strenuously defend that system of doctrines which you oppose? Are you not enemies to us, because you take it for granted we are so to you? ”

“ I wish to live peaceably, but I have lately experienced so many instances of your most bare-faced and wanton oppression, to my prejudice, that there’s no longer a doubt with me what course I must be under the disagreeable necessity to take, that I may obtain redress and do justice to myself and family. ”

“ Very well, then, how, under such circumstances, could a man help becoming biased? 'One swallow does not make a summer,' as the English proverb says: a hundred suppositions do not constitute one single proof. Reason speaks in that way, I admit, but let a man try to subject prejudice to reason. An examining magistrate, after all, is only a man—hence given to prejudice. ”

“ Recognition of this truth requires abandonment of prejudice—prejudice of every kind—race, class, colour, creed, nation, sex, degree of material civilization, everything which enables people to consider themselves superior to others. ”

“ That is, a prejudice would not be a sufficient ground to justify withholding blame. Well grounded confidence in such a person, if there was reason for it, ought to leave such an effect, but not prejudice. ”

“ Still I am always aware, when speaking in public, that there are those present who are disposed to find fault with this people, and to try to raise a prejudice against them; and they will pick up isolated words and sentences, and put them together to suit themselves, and send forth a garbled version to prejudice the world against us. ”

“ Observing the prevailing power of prejudice, and the easiness of mankind to be imposed upon, especially on the side of uncharitableness, we have the less wondered at the treatment which we, as a people, have suffered. ”

“ But when I engage to another man, and he hath a prejudice by believing, I not performing it, I am bound to repair that man as much as may be, and let the prejudice fall upon myself and not upon any other. ”

“ The hollow, specious, moral judgments of mankind, when under the dominion of prejudice, are not the standards by which to judge the men of life and earnestness: the men whose convictions, and not whose personal interests, mark their path. ”

“ But there are mountains of established law and custom to overcome; a wilderness of prejudice to be subdued; a powerful foe of selfishness and self-interest to overthrow; wild beasts of pride, envy, malice, and hate to destroy. ”

“ This passive instinct he called "prejudice"—the unreasoning and unquestioning attachment to the family and "the little platoon we belong to in society," from which our affection, coincident always with a feeling of contented obligation, is gradually enlarged to take in the peculiar institutions of our country; "prejudice renders a man's virtues his habits, ... through just prejudice his duty becomes a part of his nature." ”

“ My dear countrymen, let us divest ourselves of prejudice, take a view of our present wretched situation, contrast it with our former happy one, carefully investigate the cause, and industriously seek some means to escape the evils we now feel, and prevent those that we have reason to expect. ”

“ Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,—however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right ”

“ And under this comprehensive formula he proceeded to study and attack Family Prejudice, National Prejudice, Race Prejudice, War, Class Prejudice, Professional Prejudice, Sex Prejudice, in the most industrious and elaborate manner. Whether one regards one's self or others he held that these prejudices are evil things. ”

“ If you are virtuous, and are determined upon remaining so, prepare yourself to bear a great deal of misery; if you feel yourself sufficiently above what is called prejudice, if, in one word, you feel disposed to consent to everything, in order to secure a comfortable position, be very careful not to make a mistake. ”

“ But the prejudice is discernible in every class of society, even in the very highest. We have also arrayed against us in our crusade for right and justice the dying but still formidable power of clericalism. ”

“ Every absorbing passion and every ignoble impulse—love of fame, religious zeal, national prejudice, desire of novelty, insatiable cupidity, private malice—attracted the roving, the licentious, and the unprincipled to the standard of the Cross. ”