Quotes to inspire and reflect

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.

As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.

Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed-upon myths of its conquerors.

The majority has the might—more’s the pity—but it hasn’t the right. . . . The minority is always right.

If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littlenesses, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

Shall we judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side.

As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

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

The interaction of disparate cultures, the vehemence of the ideals that led the immigrants here, the opportunity offered by a new life, all gave America a flavor and a character that make it as unmistakable and as remarkable to people today as it was to Alexis de Tocqueville in the early part of the nineteenth century.

Prejudice is the reason of fools.

No prejudice has even been able to prove its case in the court of reason.

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.

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

Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

Prejudice is opinion without judgement.

Our nation is waging a war on a radical network of terrorists—not on a religion, and not a civilization. As we wage this war to defend our principles, we must live up to those principles ourselves. And one of the deepest commitments of America is tolerance. No one should be treated unkindly because of the color of their skin or the content of their creed. No one should be unfairly judged by appearance or ethnic background, or religious faith.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya : ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’

What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.

It’s an universal law—intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

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.

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however often Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.

What a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.

There is a great danger that [the Internet] becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths.

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great—a little understood thing.

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.

One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are.

And if, to be sure, sometimes you need to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and quick defence.