Howard Jacobson Quotes

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

A funny thing about tolerant people? They're really only tolerant when you agree with them.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat.

You know, people aren't always the most open-minded.

The show doesn't drive home a lesson, but it can open up people's minds enough for them to see how stupid every kind of prejudice can be.

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ASK. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

It is, therefore, essential that we guard our own thinking and not be among those who cry out against prejudices applicable to themselves, while busy spawning intolerances for others.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness.

To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show the darkness but to put out our own eyes.

If you have ideology, you are less tolerant of the variant point of view.

Education helps one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.

I don’t care for ideological people. It’s like those people just want to stop thinking.

People must be protected from prejudice against their person. But people cannot be protected from prejudice against their ideas - because otherwise we're all done.

People tend not to want to question dogma. But I'm afraid of dogma.

If you're always in the company of people who agree with you, you're going to think of people who don't agree with you as venal or stupid. I constantly tell my students that if they're in the company of people who always say "amen" to what you say, find other company. And that is the source of illiberalism, when you are unable to listen to someone who thinks differently. That's when democracies are in trouble.

I don't like the tendency on the part of so many people today to think that those who don't agree with them are bad. In fact, I find that very dangerous.

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it - the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

I am not bigoted enough for a system-and not even for my system.

Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance

Belief is tricky because left to its own devices, it can court a kind of surety, an unquestioning allegiance that fears doubt and destroys difference.

There are two ways to replace an orthodoxy: with openness or with another orthodoxy.