Bias Quotes

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above-average drivers.

Judgment means that you view the world as you are, rather than as it is.

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened.

The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about something is usually not our own but only the current one pertaining to our class, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim on the surface.

Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Truth becomes untruth if uttered by your enemy

Every word is a prejudice.

Once upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor's son. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief and spoke like a thief. But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other child.

Both Bush as well, as Tony Blair, are undermining an idea which was sponsored by their predecessors. They do not care. Is it because the secretary-general of the United Nations [Ghanaian Kofi Annan] is now a black man? They never did that when secretary-generals were white.

We label judges with having the meanest motives, and yet we desire that our reputation and fame should depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either from their jealousy or preoccupation or want of intelligence, opposed to us - and yet despite their bias, just for the sake of making these men decide in our favor, we peril in so many ways both our peace and our life.

I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men." "Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.

Israeli murderers are called "commandos," Arab commandos are called "terrorists."

That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.

He liked the works of his friends, which is beautiful as loyalty but can be disastrous as judgement.

Now, in practice, in daily social interactions, etc., there may be all kinds of biases and prejudices that are unspoken, that people aren't aware of, that affect who's hired, and who gets loans, and how kids are treated in school. But it's a powerful thing if you have on your side an idea that the overwhelming majority of people believe in because that's how you can build a consensus that's lasting.

Interest blinds some people, and enlightens others.

Hatred obscures all distinctions.

The senses interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of.

When a man of normal habits is ill, everyone hastens to assure him that he is going to recover. When a vegetarian is ill (which fortunately very seldom happens), everyone assures him that he is going to die, and that they told him so, and that it serves him right. They implore him to take at least a little gravy, so as to give himself a chance of lasting out the night

Prejudice is an opinion without judgment.

We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

Human judgment of human actions is true and void , that is to say, first true and then void.... The judgment of the word is true, the judgment in itself is void.... Only he who is a party can really judge, but as a party he cannot judge. Hence it follows that there is no possibility of judgment in the world, only a glimmer of it.

Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.

Not only is patriotism disdained, the very basis for pride in one's country and culture is systematically undermined in our educational institutions at all levels. The achievements of western civilization are buried in histories that portray every human sin found here as if they were peculiarities of the west.

However greatly we distrust the sincerity of those we converse with, yet still we think they tell more truth to us than to anyone else.

If you see a black family, it's looting, but if it's a white family they are looking for food.

Prejudice is a learned trait. You're not born prejudiced; you're taught it.

There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgment when used to give an opinion on our own works. It is sound in judging the work of our enemies but not that of our friends, for hate and love are two of the most powerfully motivating factors found among living things.

Whenever you hear anyone talking about a cultural or even about a human problem, you should never forget to inquire who the speaker really is. The more general the problem, the more the person will smuggle his or her own personal psychology into the account he or she gives of it.

I watched him [a 'fat Russian agent'] with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts journalists.

My childhood began, as everybody's childhood begins, with prejudices. Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in his old age.

His (the theologian) basic instinct of self preservation forbids him to respect reality at any point or even to let it get a word in.

We rarely ever perceive others as being sensible, except for those who agree with us.

[T]he more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

So many figures are quoted to prove so many things. Sometimes it depends on what paper you read or what broadcast you listen in on.

Logic: an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice.

When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.

Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

We are eager to believe that others are flawed because we are eager to believe in what we wish for.

How difficult it is to avoid having a special standard for oneself.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.

You don't expect me to know what to say about a play when I don't know who the author is, do you? . . . If it's by a good author, it's a good play, naturally. That stands to reason.

But I think I’m coloured by my own wishes, & experimental mood.

If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

All words are prejudices.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

We criticize a thinker more acutely when he advances a proposition that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonableto do so when his proposition is agreeable to us.

I'm never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.

Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud.

Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men.

Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.

The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.

As people get their opinions so largely from the newspapers they read... But the Press is not free, the newspapers are owned by rich men.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets you fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet.