Anna Quindlen Quotes

The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.

There is no cure for narrowness of mind.

Intellectually, most people never wash. They never free their minds of the accumulated rubbish of centuries.

Prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all that it requires is room. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same. Prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.

Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out.

Prejudice locks the mind. Nothing can enter. Nothing true can escape.

Ignorance is the wet-nurse of prejudice.

It is the habit of mediocre minds to condemn all that is beyond their grasp.

There is no man so blind as one who has made up his mind.

Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.

Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.

Prejudices of all kinds have their strongest holds in the minds of the vulgar and the ignorant.

The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.

Small minds have always lashed out at what they don't understand.

We never knew an ignorant person yet but was prejudiced.

Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.

Consistency is the defense of a small mind

Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves

The world, and the great and free United States in particular, is full of narrow-minded, ignorant, moronic, bigoted, cowardly, self-righteous, anemic, pig-headed, stupid, puritanical, hypocritical, prejudiced, fanatical, cocoa-blooded atavists, who soothe their inferiority complex by barking their hatred of anything new.

It liberates the vandal to travel-you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction.

I agree some people are biased, and I agree that they exist in a world of pure, sheer, raw hatred for anything they don't agree with, but I do believe they're also ignorant. I think they're dumb as skunks. I don't think they've been educated. They haven't the ability to hear and listen to common sense and understand what it is.

Fear and Bigotry are bred fom isolation and ignorance. -Shekinah

How prone we are to come to the consideration of every question with heads and hearts pre-occupied! How prone to shrink from any opinion, however reasonable, if it be opposed to any, however unreasonable, of our own! How disposed are we to judge, in anger, those who call upon us to think, and encourage us to enquire! To question our prejudices seems nothing less than sacrilege; to break the chains of our ignorance, nothing short of impiety!

The English writer, Charles Lamb, said one day: "I hate that man." "But you don't know him." "Of course, I don't," said Lamb. "Do you think I could possibly hate a man I know?"