Paul Bloom Quotes

I think it's funny when stereotypes happen.

If someone believes they are limited by their gender, race or background, they will become more limited.

Reason is the servant of instinct.

Some social scientists say that in-group/out-group biases are hard-wired into the human brain. Even without overt prejudice, it is cognitively convenient for people to sort items into categories and respond based on what is usually associated with those categories: a form of statistical discrimination, playing the odds.

It was an ongoing struggle to say no, I don't want to be a part of the perpetuation of this stereotype.

Yes, it seems we've got this mutant gene in our human personality that makes us susceptible to this same kind of mistake over and over again. It's really uncanny how we build these beautiful multicultural edifices and then allow this switch to be flipped and everybody goes, 'Oh, the other, get them out of here.'

Stereotypes and perceptions have their real effects.

There are two methods of human activity - and according to which one of these two kinds of activity people mainly follow, are there two kinds of people: One use their reason to learn what is good and what is bad and they act according to this knowledge; the other act as they want to and then they use their reason to prove that that which they did was good and that which they didn't do was bad.

Prejudice is ignorance.

If somebody comes up and they're African American as Mike is, and they're extremely talented as Mike is, they say, "Oh, yeah, he's the next ..." I think that it points to disparity.

Consider prejudice. Once a person begins to accept a stereotype of a particular group, that "thought" becomes an active agent, "participating" in shaping how he or she interacts with another person who falls in that stereotyped class. In turn, the tone of their interaction influences the other person's behaviour. The prejudiced person can't see how his prejudice shapes what he "sees" and how he acts. In some sense, if he did, he would no longer be prejudiced. To operate, the "thought" of prejudice must remain hidden to its holder

Thinking. A process by which I use my brain to make a rational decision.

The way that we make dumb decisions and discriminatory decisions is by employing stereotypes about groups of people. We don't see people as fully human when other people speak for them.

WHAT a person thinks is determined by HOW a person thinks.

We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally.

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.

Let's be honest: For a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young, black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear.

Racism is like high blood pressure—the person who has it doesn’t know he has it until he drops over with a God damned stroke. There are no symptoms of racism. The victim of racism is in a much better position to tell you whether or not you’re a racist than you are.

The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

In general it may be said that the things which we take for granted without inquiry or reflection are just the things which determine our conscious thinking and decide our conclusions. And these habitudes which lie below the level of reflection are just those which have been formed in the constant give and take of relationship with others.

Reason also is choice.

I think that bias is not a fixed thing. It's not as though some people are biased and others are not. It ebbs and flows. It can be manipulated. It changes according to a person's circumstances.

He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.

[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.

Where prejudice exists it always discolors our thoughts.