Inspirational and Insightful Quotations #36 --- Prejudice

Prejudice, like the common cold, clogs your ears, makes it hard to open your eyes, stuffs up your head–and spreads rapidly on exposure.

—John Mooney, Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, Sept. 4, 1959.

Prejudice is the greatest and most powerful tornado that ever swept the earth. It has been the cause of the greatest injustice to humankind, and has brought about more sorrow and trouble, perhaps, than any other one thing.

—Nephi L. Morris, Deseret Evening News, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 25, 1903.

People sometimes talk vehemently about being guided by conscience in certain things, when in truth they are guided by blind, unreasoning prejudice. There is a difference.

—J.B. Cranfill, Baptist Standard, Dallas, Texas, Sept. 11, 1902.

There are at least two main reasons for religious prejudice and hatred. The principal one is ignorance. Religious prejudice, as I see it, is dislike and hatred for another man's religion–and that dislike and hatred is there because the one who has it just does not know the facts in the case. Certainly each man is entitled to believe as he wishes, but he should be willing to allow the other fellow the same privilege.

—Charles M. Hughes, Leesville Leader, Leesville, La., March 2, 1950.

If there was no ignorance, there would be no prejudice.

—Bert Moses, Lake Charles American Press, Lake Charles, La., Aug. 26, 1936.

Religious prejudice inhibits quarters so narrow as to leave no room for doubt.

—R.N. Price, Jr., Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Philadelphia, Pa., October 1914.

Prejudices, like millstones, may drown a man.

—Ernest C. Wareing, Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec. 11, 1924.

Prejudice is a chain about your reason.

—Ernest C. Wareing, Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 9, 1927.

Prejudice is a result of jealousy.

—Raleigh R. White, Baptist Standard, Dallas, Texas, Jan. 6, 1916.

Prejudice is the strait jacket which heredity puts on reason.

—H. Curran Wilbur, Wheeling Register, Wheeling, W.Va., Feb. 1, 1903.

The man who wants to be fair does his best to keep his principles unmixed with prejudices.

—Jack Warwick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pa., Sept. 9, 1938.

A prejudice isn’t like a principle. It is necessary to rekindle a prejudice, to keep it alive.

—Jack Warwick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pa., Dec. 21, 1936.

Prejudice and imagination, working in combination, can cause a lot of trouble.

—Jack Warwick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, Pa., Dec. 27, 1944.

Clear thought cannot prevail when prejudice blocks the way.

—Phil Conley, The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Miss., Feb. 12, 1948.

Only narrowminded people are guilty of prejudice.

—Phil Conley, The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Miss., Jan. 19, 1950.

The reason the bigot advertises his one idea so vigorously is that it is his whole stock in intellectual trade.

—Henry F. Cope, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Ill., Feb. 28, 1909.

It is always the fellow with prejudice that wants to assert his fairness most.

—Edwin E. Naugle, St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg, Fla., Nov. 1, 1921.

A bigot, as we see it, is a fellow who is not open-minded because he is afraid not so much that something else will get in as that something, if anything, already within will get out.

—Jack Haney, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, La., April 12, 1926.

It is not so important that we air our prejudices often as they we occasionally overhaul them.

—John Andrew Holmes, Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 23, 1928.

Men stake off hells with the tapeline of their own prejudices.

—W.A. MacKenzie, The Leesburg Morning Commercial, Leesburg, Fla., Dec. 9, 1927.

Most arguments constitute an attempt to supply crutches to prejudices that are too weak to stand alone.

—Olin Miller, Palm Beach Post, West Palm Beach, Fla., Feb. 5, 1945.

Prejudice does not want facts. It feeds on fancy and imagination.

—R.E. Smith, The Shreveport Times, Shreveport, La., Nov. 18, 1929.

Prejudice is the stepfather of slander.

—The Chicago Daily News, Chicago, Ill., Feb. 18, 1919 .

Knowledge plus sympathy will dispel prejudice.

—The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, Mass., Dec. 22, 1914.

How the average person forms an opinion: To a small measure of information he adds a dash of imagination and a large quantity of prejudice, and shakes well with emotion.

—Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2, 1939.