11 Quotations Found

Anti-Semitism itself is a conspiracy theory: a story about a tiny, malign group that masterminds world events, from the killing of Jesus to the creation of capitalism (and—never mind the contradiction—the spread of communism). Anti-Semitism differs in this respect from racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia. Those other bigotries are founded on contempt. Anti-Semitism, like all forms of conspiracism, is founded on paranoia. Which is why … [ Read more ]

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior, Race Relations

The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours. No one has insight into all the ideals. No one should presume to judge them off-hand. The pretension to dogmatize about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties, … [ Read more ]

Author: William James | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

Assumptions can be malleable. Change the assumptions and the outcomes will change as well. Generally speaking, assumptions come into play when we are dealing with unknown or incomplete information situations, so it’s good to change the underlying assumptions and see how things would play out. Of course, if you are making assumptions, especially incorrect ones, in known situations, you need to correct that.

Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.

Author: William James | Subjects: Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

Prejudice can be detected, discounted, and refined, but so long as finite men must compress into a short schooling preparation for dealing with a vast civilization, they must carry pictures of it around with them, and have prejudices. The quality of their thinking and doing will depend on whether those prejudices are friendly, friendly to other people, to other ideas, whether they evoke love of … [ Read more ]

Author: Walter Lippmann | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior

A pattern of stereotypes is not neutral. It is not merely a way of substituting order for the great blooming, buzzing confusion of reality. It is not merely a short cut. It is all these things and something more. It is the guarantee of our self-respect; it is the projection upon the world of our own sense of our own value, our own position and … [ Read more ]

Author: Walter Lippmann | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior

The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society.

They are an ordered, more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world … [ Read more ]

Author: Walter Lippmann | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Perception | Observation, Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior

The great tragedy of human society […] is that those in power are reluctant to hold stereotypes lightly and modify them gladly, because stereotypes are how they stake out their place in the world and maintain the world-order that is the source of their power.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Power, Prejudice and Stereotype

We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. They mark out certain objects as familiar or strange, emphasizing the difference, so that the slightly familiar is seen as very familiar, and the somewhat strange as sharply alien… Were … [ Read more ]

Author: Walter Lippmann | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Perception | Observation, Prejudice and Stereotype, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

Those whom we love and admire most are the men and women whose consciousness is peopled thickly with persons rather than with types, who know us rather than the classification into which we might fit. For even without phrasing it to ourselves, we feel intuitively that all classification is in relation to some purpose not necessarily our own; that between two human beings no association … [ Read more ]

Author: Walter Lippmann | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Prejudice and Stereotype, Relationships

For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.

Author: Walter Lippmann | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Culture, Life & Society, Prejudice and Stereotype, Thought | Inquiry