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PREACHERS
PREDICTIONS --- PREJUDICE --- PREPARED (BE)

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PREACHERS

see: "RELIGION" for related links


A man wastes his time going to hear some of our
eloquent modern preachers; they may change his
opinions, but never his conduct.
--Honorι de Balzac (1799—1850)
French journalist and writer.

The world is dying for want, not of
good preaching, but of good hearing.
--George Dana Boardman, the younger
(1828—1903)
President of the American Baptist Missionary Union.

That is not the best sermon which makes the hearers
go away talking to one another, and praising the
speaker, but which makes them go away thoughtful
and serious, and hastening to be alone.
--Gilbert Burnet (1643—1715)
English bishop and historian.

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda water the day after.
--Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (1788—1824)
English Romantic poet and satirist.
_Don Juan_ [1819—1824]

He preaches well that lives well, quoth Sancho;
that's all the divinity I understand.
--Miguel de Cervantes (1547—1616)
Spanish novelist.
_Don Quixote_, Part II [1615], Book III, Chapter 20

I like the silent church before the service
begins, better than any preaching.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Essays: First Series_ [1841], "Self-Reliance"

It is easier to declaim like an orator against a thousand sins in others than
to mortify one sin in ourselves; to be more industrious in our pulpits than
in our closets; to preach twenty sermons to our people than one to our
own hearts.
--John Flavel (1627—1691)
English Presbyterian clergyman.
Attributed in _Hogg's Weekly Instructor_ [7 November 1846].

The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes
away saying, not "What a lovely sermon," but, "I will
do something!"
--Francis, St, de Sales (1567—1622)
French bishop.
_Introduction to the Devout Life_ [1609]

A good example is the best sermon.
--Thomas Fuller (1654—1734)
English writer and physician.
Comp., _Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs_ [1732]

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.
--Oliver Goldsmith (1728—1774)
Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and dramatist.
Attributed in _The Children's Friend_, vol. XII [1913].

-

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers
of morality: they discourse like angels, but they
live like men.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
_Rasselas_ [1759]


A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking
on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you
are surprised to find it done at all.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_
"31 July 1963" [1791].

-

I don't like to hear cut-and-dried sermons. When I
hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he
were fighting bees.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865].

Some plague the people with too long sermons;
for the faculty of listening is a tender thing,
and soon becomes weary and satiated.
--Martin Luther (1483—1546)
German Protestant theologian.

I never sleep comfortably except when I am at sermon.
--Franηois Rabelais (c. 1494— c. 1553]
French humanist, satirist, and physician.
_Gargantua and Pantagruel_, bk. I, ch. XLI [c. 1548]

The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice
than the best that was ever preached on that subject.
--George Savile [Lord Halifax] (1633—1695)
English politician and essayist.
_The Lady's New Year's Gift: or Advice to a Daughter_ [1688]

When I am in the pulpit, I have the pleasure of
seeing my audience nod approbation while they
sleep.
--attributed to Sydney Smith (1771—1845)
English clergyman and essayist,
in 1802 cofounded "The Edinburgh Review."

Some ministers would make good martyrs.
They are so dry, they would burn well.
--Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834—1892)
English nonconformist preacher.

He was a preacher. . . and never charged nothing
for his preaching, and it was worth it, too.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ [1884]

Uncle Bascom, with his mad and beautiful tongue, has
been known to drive people insane with terror in
twenty-seven minutes by the clock. There are
still people in the asylums that he put there.
--Thomas Wolfe (1900—1938)
American novelist.
_Of Time and the River_ [1935]

--

A farmer purchased an old, run-down, abandoned farm with plans to
turn it into a thriving enterprise. The fields were grown over with
weeds, the farmhouse was falling apart, and the fences were broken
down. During his first day of work, the town preacher stops by to
bless the man's work, saying, "May you and God work together to make
this the farm of your dreams!" A few months later, the preacher
stops by again to call on the farmer. Lo and behold, it's a
completely different place. The farm house is completely rebuilt
and in excellent condition, there is plenty of cattle and other
livestock happily munching on feed in well-fenced pens, and the
fields are filled with crops planted in neat rows. "Amazing!" the
preacher says. "Look what God and you have accomplished together!"
"Yes, reverend," says the farmer, "but remember what the farm was
like when God was working it alone!"

-----

homily (noun)
A sermon, especially one intended to edify a congregation
on a practical matter and not intended to be a theological
discourse.

sententious (adj.)
1: Using or marked by pompous, high-flown moralizing.
2: Using many truisms or maxims.
3: Rich in pointed, concise truths.
Related: meaningful
Derived: sententiously, adv. ; sententiousness, n.



Click picture to ZOOM
PREDICTIONS

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see: "OOPS"


The motor-car will help solve the congestion of traffic.
--Arthur James Balfour (1848—1930)
British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1920—1925].
Attributed prediction, c. 1910.

One day the great European War [will] come out
of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.
--Otto von Bismarck (1815—1898)
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Prussia 1862—1890.
He unified Germany with a series of successful wars and
became the first Chancellor 1871—1890 of the German Empire.
Attributed in Winston Churchill _The World Crisis_ [1923].

[On his drug addiction:]
I'll die young but it's like kissing God.
--Lenny Bruce [Leonard Alfred Schneider] (1925—1966)
American comedian.
Quoted in Richard Neville _Playpower_ [1970].

Automobiles will start to decline almost as soon as the
last shot is fired in World War II. The name of Igor
Sikorsky will be as well known as Henry Ford's, for his
helicopter will all but replace the horseless carriage
as the new means of popular transportation. Instead of
a car in every garage, there will be a helicopter....
These 'copters' will be so safe and will cost so little
to produce that small models will be made for teenage
youngsters. These tiny 'copters, when school lets out,
will fill the sky as the bicycles of our youth filled
the prewar roads.
--Harry Bruno, aviation publicist [1943]

The best of prophets of the future is the past.
--Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (1788—1824)
English Romantic poet and satirist.
_Journal_, [28 January 1821]

-

The threat of a new ice age must now stand
alongside nuclear war as a likely source of
wholesale death and misery for mankind.
--Nigel Calder (1931— )
British science writer and environmentalist.
Speech, Earth Day [1969].

& see:

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands
of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken,
it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war,
and this could all come about before the year 2000.
--Lowell Ponte
Libertarian radio talk show host.
_The Cooling_ [1976]

& see:

If present trends continue, the world will be about four
degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990,
but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is
about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.
--Kenneth E.F. Watt (b. 1929)
On air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day [1970].

& note:

There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture
out of such a trifling investment of fact.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_Life on the Mississippi_ [1883],
ch. XVII "Cut-Offs and Stephen"

-

If Ronald Reagan is re-elected, accidental nuclear
war becomes a mathematical certainty.
--Dr. Helen Caldicott [1984]

^

Girolamo Cardano (1501—1576)
Italian mathematician and astrologer.

Cardano was renowned throughout Europe as
an astrologer, even visiting England to cast
a horoscope of the young king, Edward VI.
A steadfast believer in the accuracy of his
so-called science, Cardano constructed a
horoscope predicting the hour of his own
death. When the day dawned, it found him
in good health and safe from harm. Rather
than have his prediction falsified, Cardano
killed himself.

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been
playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do
it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.
And one of the games to which it is most attached is called 'Keep
to-morrow dark,' and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire,
I have no doubt) 'Cheat the Prophet.' The players listen very carefully
and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to
happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever
men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something
else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.
_The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ [1904],
ch. 1 "Introductory Remarks on the Art of Prophecy"

When I was a boy I heard a sermon in Paris prophesying
that as soon as a thousand years was completed the
advent of Antichrist would take place and not long after
the time of universal judgement would follow.
--Abbot Cibbo of Fleury [998],
in J.P. Migne (ed.) _Patralogia Latina_ [1844—1864] Vol.139
(about the prediction of the end of the world in the year 1000.)

"Gone With the Wind" is going to be the biggest flop
in Hollywood history. I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable
who's falling flat on his face and not Gary Cooper.
--Gary Cooper (1901—1961)
American film actor.
After Gable's acceptance of the Rhett Butler role Cooper had turned down.
In Larry Swindell _The Last Hero: A Biography of Gary Cooper_ [1980].

Fifty years hence automobile traffic will have entirely disappeared
from the surface thoroughfares of New York City, and people will
be shot through tubes like merchandise.
--Harvey Wiley Corbett
The American Institute of Architects [1925]

-

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the
world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions
of people (including Americans) are going to starve
to death.
--Paul R. Ehrlich (1932— )
American entomologist and author.
Prologue _The Population Bomb_ [1968].


In ten years all important animal life in the sea will
be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be
evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.
--Paul R. Ehrlich (1932— )
American entomologist and author.
On Earth Day [1970].

-

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy
is the most gratuitous.
--George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819—1880)
English novelist.
_Middlemarch_ [1871—1872]

A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a strategic impossibility.
--George Fielding Eliot (1894—1971).
"The Impossible War with Japan"
_American Mercury_ [September 1938]

Stocks have reached what looks like a
permanently high plateau.
--Irving Fisher (1867—1947)
American professor of economics at Yale University.
[In 1929.]

There will, in the near future, be a revolt, both of the reason and
the conscience of the civilized world, from the state of armed
peace which at present prevails, with its ever-multiplying fleets of
Dreadnoughts and its universal training for war. The appliances
for war have grown to such a scale that war itself will be
recognized as impossible.
--William Henry Fitchett (1841—1928)
Australian journalist, minister, newspaper editor and educator.

We have already begun to fly; several persons, here and there,
have found the secret to fitting wings to themselves, of setting
them in motion, so that they are held up in the air and are carried
across streams . . . . the art of flying is only just being born; it will
be perfected, and some day we will go as far as the Moon.
--Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757)
French philosopher and author.
_Entretiens sur la Pluralitι des Mondes Habitιs_ [1686]

The only function of economic forecasting
is to make astrology look respectable.
--John Kenneth Galbraith (1908—2006)
American economist.

There is no doubt that the course and character of the
feared 'European war'... will become the first world
war in the full sense of the word.
--Ernst Haeckel (1834—1919)
German biologist and philosopher.
"Indianapolis Star" [20 September 1914]

By and by we shall have balloons and pass
over to Europe between sun and sun. Oh,
for the good old days of heavy post-coaches
and speed at the rate of six miles an hour!
--Philip Hone (1780—1851)
New York businessman and political leader.
His diary gave a comprehensive description
of New York life during the second quarter
of the nineteenth century.
_Diary_ "28 November 1844"

^

At the end of the Nineties, an internal IBM paper recounted a
long-forgotten article published in the summer of 1945 during the
closing weeks of World War II. In it, Vannevar Bush described a
theoretical machine he called the Memex, never built, that could
extend human memory by mechanically organizing information
and making it readily accessible through a web of associations. A
Memex, he explained to readers of the Atlantic Monthly in July
1945, "is a device in which an individual stores all his books,
records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it
may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility." Through
it, people would be able to store, retrieve, consult, and learn from
the information it contained and from the cumulative record of
human success and failure to that point in history. By providing
people greater access to the bewildering store of knowledge that
science was accumulating, the Memex would allow mankind
to profit from the inherited knowledge of the ages.

Looking ahead, Bush envisioned machines capable of compressing
a library of a million volumes into a box placed on the end of a desk
before the person operating it from a keyboard. A "slanting translucent
screen" extending from the machine would display information the user
wanted. "The world," he noted that July of 1945, "has arrived at an age
of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound
to come of it." In recalling Bush's Memex more than half a century later,
IBM said his article describing it "turned out to be of those time-bomb
essays — a piece so far ahead of its time that it takes decades to
recognize its genius. For the Memex in essence is a personal
computer, and more than that it is a personal computer in which
information is bound together by links of association. Every time
a Web user fires up her browser and navigates from site to site,
following threads of relationship as she roams, she is, in effect,
continuing a journey that began with Vannevar Bush more than
half a century ago."

Vannevar Bush's prototype of the personal computer introduced
into the American, and world, market thirty-six years after his article
has become an innovation so familiar that grandparents — and
great-grandparents! — use it to communicate with their families,
conduct personal business, and access a variety of information daily.
They do so without a clue as to who Vannevar Bush was or the
great debt they owe him and other Technotimes pioneers.

--Haynes Johnson (1931— )
American journalist; winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize
for National Reporting.
_The Best of Times: America in the Clinton Years_ [2001]

^

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
--Lord Kelvin (1824—1907)
British scientist.
President, Royal Society [1895]

Whether you like it or not, history is
on our side. We will bury you.
--Nikita Khrushchev (1894—1971)
Soviet statesman, Premier [1958—1964].
Speech to Western diplomats in Moscow
[18 November 1956].

Whatever happens, the United States Navy
is not going to be caught napping.
--Frank Knox (1874—1944)
American Secretary of the Navy 1940—1944.
Attributed comment [4 December 1941].

If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack
Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to
her, then. [.] Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in
a single Democratic primary. I'll predict that right now.
--William Kristol (1952— )
American political analyst and commentator.
"Fox News Sunday" [17 December 2006]

-

If we were to prophesy that in the year 1930 a population
of fifty millions, better fed, clad, and lodged than the
English of our time, will cover these islands, that Sussex
and Huntingdonshire will be wealthier than the wealthiest
parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire now are, that
cultivation, rich as that of a flower-garden, will be
carried up to the very tops of Ben Nevis and Helvellyn,
that machines constructed on principles yet undiscovered,
will be in every house, that there will be no highways but
railroads, no travelling but by steam, that our debt, vast
as it seems to us, will appear to our great-grandchildren
a trifling incumbrance, which might easily be paid off in
a year or two, many people would think us insane.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800—1859)
English politician and historian.
_Southey's Colloquies on Society_ [1830]


Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the
reins of government with a strong hand, or your
republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste
by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman
Empire was in the fifth; with this difference, that
the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman
Empire came from without and that your Huns and
Vandals will have been engendered within your own
country by your own institutions ... Your constitution
is all sail and no anchor.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800—1859)
English politician and historian.
To Henry Stephens Randall (American politician) [23 May 1857],
in Thomas Pinney (ed.)
_The Letters of Thomas Babington Macauley_ [1981] v. 6, p. 96.

-

There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural
phenomenon, however marvelous it may seem today, will
remain forever inexplicable. Soon or late the laws governing
the production of life itself will be discovered in the laboratory,
and man may set up business as a creator on his own account.
The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even highly
probable.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.
_Treatise on the Gods_ [1930], ch. 5 "Its State Today"

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical
and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
--attributed to Simon Newcomb (1835—1909)
Canadian-born American astronomer and mathematician.
(Eighteen months before the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk.)

It is doubtful if aeroplanes will ever cross the
ocean ... The public has greatly overestimated
the possibilities of the aeroplane, imagining
that in another generation they will be able to
fly over to London in a day. This is manifestly
impossible.
--William Pickering (1858—1938)
American astronomer.
Quoted in "The Aeronautical Journal" [1968].

The human race may well become extinct
before the end of the century.
--Bertrand Russell (1872—1970)
British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate.
Interview in _Playboy_ [March 1963].

There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth
Amendment [prohibition] as there is for a humming-bird
to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument
tied to its tail.
--Morris Sheppard (1875—1941)
American politician who served as U.S. Senator from Texas [1913—1941].
1930 comment, as quoted in Charles Merz _The Dry Decade_ [1931].

Our children will enjoy in their homes
electrical energy too cheap to meter.
--Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss (1896—1974)
American businessman who was Chairman of
the Atomic Energy Commission [1953—1958].
Speech on atomic energy [16 September 1954].

The rivers of America will run with blood filled to
their banks before we will submit to them taking
the Bible out of our schools.
--Billy Sunday [William Ashley Sunday] (1862—1935)
American evangelist.

The art of prophecy is very difficult,
especially with respect to the future.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.

The submarine may be the cause of bringing
conflict to a halt altogether, for fleets will become
useless, and as other war matιriel continues to
improve, war will become impossible.
--Jules Verne (1828—1905)
French author.
_The Future of the Submarine_ [1904]

[Referrring to the advent of talkies in 1927:]
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
The music — that's the big plus about this.
--Harry Morris Warner [Hirsch Eichelbaum] (1881—1958)
Polish-born co-founder of Warner Brothers.
Quoted in Alexander Walker _Stardom: The Hollywood Phenomenon_ [1970].

If present trends continue, the world will be about four
degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990,
but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is
about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.
--Kenneth E.F. Watt (1929— )
On air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day [1970].

There will shortly be no priests. I say their work is done.
--Walt Whitman (1819—1892)
American poet.
_Leaves of Grass_ [1855—1892]
"By Blue Ontario's Shore" [1856]

No flying machine will ever fly from New York to
Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at
the requisite speed for four days without stopping.
--Orville Wright (1871—1948)
American aviation pioneer.

I confess that in 1901 I said to my brother Orville that
man would not fly for fifty years. Two years later we
ourselves made flights. This demonstration of my
impotence as a prophet gave me such a shock that
ever since I have distrusted myself and avoided all
predictions.
--Wilbur Wright (1867—1912)
American aviation pioneer.
In a speech to the Aero Club of France [5 November 1908].

-

North Dakota is a doomed state. In twenty years
it will revert to the Indian and the buffalo. We
must be moving on.
--an early settler, quoted in Frank P. Stockbridge
"The North Dakota Man Crop"
_World's Work_ magazine [November 1912].

If on the first day of the month of nisan [April] the
sun looks sprinkled with blood and the light is cool:
the king will die and there will be mourning in the
country.
--Babylonian tablet (BM40085)
in M.J. Cohan and John Major {ed.} _History in Quotations_ [2004]
citing Wilfred H. van Soldt _Omens of Enuma Anu Enlil [1995], p.94.
Cohan & Major explain: "The Babylonians were interested in
natural phenomena, particularly eclipses. Close observations
were made of the movements of the sun and moon and, of
course, the stars. This is an omen based on observation of
the sun at a certain time of year."

I'm sorry, Mr Kipling, but you just don't know
how to use the English language.
--The editor of the San Francisco Examiner,
letter to Rudyard Kipling [1889].

We don't like their sound, and guitar
music is on the way out.
--Decca Recording Co.,
rejecting the Beatles [1962]

Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.
--A film company's verdict
on Fred Astaire's 1928 screen test.

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be
seriously considered as a means of communication.
The device is inherently of no value to us.
--Western Union internal memo [1876]

The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in
order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be
feasible.
--a Yale University management professor in
response to Fred Smith's paper proposing
reliable overnight delivery service.
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

Professor Goddard does not know the relation between
action and reaction and the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems
to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high
schools.
--1921 New York Times editorial,
about Bob Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

There will be one million cases of AIDS in Britain by 1991.
--World Health Organisation in a 1989 report.
It over-estimated by 992,301 cases.

If a deformed newborn baby has a cropped and
inflated right ear — crazed women will seize the
land.
--anon.,
quoted in A Leo Oppenheim {ed.} _Texts From Cuneiform Sources
v. 4 E. Leichty _The Omen Series: Shumma Izbu_ [1970], p.194.

-----

aeromancy [AIR-uh-man-see], noun:
The prediction of future events from observation of weather conditions.

auspicious [aw-SPISH-uhs], adjective:
1. Giving promise of success, prosperity, or happiness;
predicting good; as, "an auspicious beginning."
2. Prosperous; fortunate; as, "auspicious years."

fatidic [fuh-TID-ik], adjective:
Of, relating to, or characterized by prophecy; prophetic.
Ex..: Throughout his very considerable body of work,
there is an obsession with time, with dates, with temporal
coincidences, with the fatidic power of numbers over our
birth and death.
--James Kirkup, "Obituary: Ernst Junger,"
_Independent_, [18 February 1998]

harbinger (noun)
Somebody or something that announces something:
somebody or something that foreshadows or
anticipates a future event

portent [POR-tent], noun:
1. A sign of a coming event or calamity; an omen.
2. Prophetic or menacing significance.
3. Something amazing; a marvel.

presage [PRES-ij; pri-SEYJ], noun:
1. An indication or warning of a future event; an omen.
2. A feeling or intuition of what the future holds.
3. Prophetic significance.
4. [Archaic] A prediction; a prognostication.
transitive verb:
1. To indicate or warn of beforehand; to foreshadow.
2. To have a presentiment of.
3. To predict; to foretell.
intransitive verb:
1. To make or utter a prediction.

prescient [PREH-shuhnt; -shee-uhnt; PREE-shuhnt; -shee-uhnt], adjective:
Knowing or anticipating the outcome of events before they happen.

prognosticate [prog-NOS-ti-keyt], verb:
1. To forecast or predict (something future) from
present indications or signs; prophesy.
2. To provide an indication of future events through
actions or signs.

sibylline [SIB-uh-leen], adjective:
1. Prophetic; oracular.
2. Of, resembling, or characteristic of a sibyl; prophetic; oracular.
3. Mysterious; cryptic.

vatic [VAT-ik], adjective:
Of or characteristic of a prophet
or prophecy; prophetic; oracular.



PREJUDICE

.
.

see: "BIGOTRY"
see: "CONTEMPT"
see: "INTOLERANCE"
see: "RACISM"
see: "TOLERANCE"

Whenever someone speaks with prejudice against a group-
Catholics, Jews, Italians, Negroes — someone else comes
up with a classic line of defense : "Look at Einstein!"
"Look at Carver!" "Look at Toscanni!". So, of course,
Catholics (or Jews, or Italians, or Negroes) must be
all right. They mean well, these defenders. But their
approach is wrong. It is even bad. What a minority group
wants is not the right to have geniuses among them but
the right to have fools and scoundrels without being
condemned as a group.
--Ruth Benedict (1887—1948)
American anthropologist, teacher, and writer.
In Telushkin _Uncommon Sense_ [1987].

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to
eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been
loosened or fertilised by education; they grow there,
firm as weeds among stones.
--Charlotte Brontλ (1816—1855)
British author.
_Jane Eyre_ [1847]

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right
of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
--Lydia Marie Child (1802—1880)
Amercan abolitionist and suffragist.
_An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans_, ch. 7 [1833]

Of my two 'handicaps' being female put many
more obstacles in my path than being black.
--Shirley Chisholm (1924—2005)
American politician.
_Unbought and Unbossed_, introduction [1970]

Prejudice disfigures the observer, not the person
observed. If only the latter could remember it.
--William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1924—2006)
American clergyman and peace activist.
_Credo_ [2004], "Social Justice and Economic Rights"

Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice.
--Denis Diderot (1713—1784)
French writer and philosopher.
Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Pearls of Thought_, p. 210 [1882].

I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
--W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (1880—1946)
American vaudeville star and film actor.
Attributed in "Saturday Review", vol. 50 [1967].

Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable
exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests.
It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but
prejudices.
--Rιmy de Gourmont (1858—1915)
French novelist, poet, playwright, and philosopher.
_The Dissociation of Ideas_ [1899]

New York is the greatest city in the world — especially for my
people. Where else, in this great and glorious land of ours, can
I get on a subway, sit in any part of the train I please, get off
at any station above 110th Street, and know I'll be welcome?
--Dick Gregory (1932— )
American comedian and social activist.
_From the Back of the Bus_ [1962]

-

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
Of people whose skin is a different shade.
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You've got to be carefully taught.

--Oscar Hammerstein II (1895—1960)
American songwriter.
"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" 1949 song from the play "South Pacific"

-

-

Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
--William Hazlitt (1778—1830)
English essayist.
"On Prejudice" [1830]


There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises
from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.
--William Hazlitt (1778—1830)
English essayist.
_The Round Table_ [1817] "On the Tendency of Sects"

-

I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.
--Langston Hughes (1902—1967)
American writer and poet.
"The Black Man Speaks"
in _Jim Crow's Last Stand_ [1943].

A great many people think they are thinking when
they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
--attributed to William James (1842—1910)
American philosopher.

Prejudice, not being founded on reason, cannot be removed by argument.
--attributed to Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.

They who, without any previous knowledge of us, think amiss
of us, do us no harm; they attack not us, but the phantom of
their own imagination.
--Jean de La Bruyθre (1645—1696)
French essayist and moralist.
_Les Caractθres_ [1688] "Of Judgments"

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out
or stumble upon a sample which supports or
defies its prejudices, and then to make it the
representative of a whole class.
--Walter Lippmann (1889—1974)
American journalist.
_Public Opinion_ [1929], ch. 3, sec. 10

I think we can agree racial prejudice is stupid.
Because if you spend time with someone from another
race and really get to know them, you can find other
reasons to hate them.
--Bernadette Luckett

Every period of life has its peculiar prejudices; whoever
saw old age, that did not applaud the past, and condemn
the present times?
--Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533—1592)
French moralist and essayist.
Attributed in John Taylor _The Pocket Lacon ..._ [2 vols., 1839].

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one
can eliminate prejudices — just recognize them.
--Edward R. Murrow [Egbert Roscoe Murrow]
(1908—1965)
American broadcaster and journalist.

Four legs good, two legs bad.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
_Animal Farm_ [1945]

-

I happen to think that the singular evil of our time
is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other
evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've
written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly
palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.
--Rod Serling (1924—1975)
American screenwriter who created,
hosted, and wrote for "The Twilight Zone,"
an American television show [1959-1964].


The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with
bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons
that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices —
to be found in the minds of men. For the record,
prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and
a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has
a fallout all its own — for the children and the
children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that
these things cannot be confined to the Twilight
Zone.
--Rod Serling (1924—1975)
American screenwriter who created,
hosted, and wrote for "The Twilight Zone,"
an American television show [1959-1964].

-

[Our prejudices are] so deeply rooted we never
think of them as prejudices but call them
common sense.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist
propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.]

-

Travel is fatal to prejudice.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_The Innocents Abroad_ [1869]


I have no race prejudices, and I think I have
no color prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can
stand any society. All I care to know is that
a man is a human being — that is enough for
me; he can't be any worse.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
"Concerning the Jews" [1899]

-

Prejudice is the reason of fools.
--Voltaire (Franηois Marie Arouet) (1694—1778)
French writer and philosopher.

Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood,
and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then
that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart
of the great Anglo-Saxon southland, that today we sound
the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears
before us done, time and time again through history. Let us
rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send
our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South.
In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this
earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before
the feet of tyranny...and I say...segregation today...segregation
tomorrow...segregation forever.
--George Wallace (1919—1998)
American Democratic politician.
Inaugural speech as Governor of Alabama
Montgomery, Alabama [14 January 1963].

-----

bias (noun) ['bahy-uh s]
An inclination (often against), a partiality, a prejudice.

jaundiced [JAWN-dist], adjective:
1. Affected with or exhibiting prejudice, as from envy or resentment.
2. Affected with or colored by or as if by jaundice; yellowed.

xenophobia (noun)
Fear of foreigners: an intense fear or dislike
of foreign people, their customs and culture,
or foreign things




PREPARED (BE)

.
.

see: "SUCCESS" for related links


Put your trust in God, my boys,
And keep your powder dry.
--Valentine Blacker (1778—1823)
Army officer in the East India Company.
"Oliver's Advice." [1834]

For major military liabilities, such as might arise
under the Covenant of the League of Nations or the
Treaty of Locarno, we are but ill-prepared ... We
alone among the Great Powers ... have neglected
our defences to the point of taking serious risks.
--British army chief of staff, annual review, 1932.

Forewarned forearmed.
--Miguel de Cervantes (1547—1616)
Spanish novelist.
_Don Quixote de la Mancha_ [1605—1615]

If we perspire more in times of peace,
we will bleed less in times of war.
--Chiang Kai-Shek (1887—1975)
Chinese military and political leader.
Quoted in John Gunther _Inside Asia_ [1939].

In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BC)
Roman orator and statesman.
_De officiis_ (On Duties), I, 21 [44 BC]

Success depends upon previous preparation, and
without such previous preparation, there is sure
to be failure.
--Confucius (551—479 B.C.)
K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher.
_The Confucian Analects_

You'll find us rough, sir, but you'll
find us ready.
--Charles Dickens (1812—1870)
English novelist.
_David Copperfield_, Ch. 3 [1850]

In fair Weather prepare for foul.
--Thomas Fuller (1654—1734)
English writer and physician.

Hope the Best but prepare for the Worst.
--Sir Roger L'Estrange (1616—1704)
English journalist and pamphleteer.
_Seneca's Morals by way of Abstract_ [1702]

You had better live your best and act your best and
think your best today; for today is the sure preparation
for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.
--attributed to Harriet Martineau (1802—1876)
English writer.

There is no record in history of a nation that ever gained
anything valuable by being unable to defend itself.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.
_Prejudices: Fifth Series_ [1926]

-

Make bright the arrows
Gather the shields:
Conquest narrows
The peaceful fields.
Stock well the quiver
With arrows bright:
The bowman feared
Need never fight.

Make bright the arrows,
O peaceful and wise!
Gather the shields
Against surprise.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892—1950)
American poet.

-

-

Nations live or die by the way they respond to the
particular challenges they face. Those challenges
may be internal or external; they may be faced by
a nation alone or in concert with other nations;
they may come gradually or suddenly. There is no
immutable law of nature that says only the unjust
will afflicted, or that the just will prevail.

While might certainly does not make right, neither
does right by itself make might. The time when a
nation most craves ease may be the moment when it
can least afford to let down its guard. The moment
when it most wishes it could address its domestic
needs may be the moment when it most urgently has
to confront an external threat. The nation that
survives is the one that rises to meet that moment:
that has the wisdom to recognize the threat and the
will to turn it back, and that does so before it is
too late....

The naοve notion that we can preserve freedom by
exuding goodwill is not only silly, but dangerous.
The more adherents it wins, the more it tempts
the aggressor.

--Richard Nixon (1913—1994)
American Republican statesman, President [1969—1974].
_The Real War_ [1980]

-

In the field of observation, chance favors
only the prepared mind. (Dans les champs de
l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les
esprits prιparιs.)
--Louis Pasteur (1822—1895)
French chemist and bacteriologist.
Address in Lille, France [7 December 1854].

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious
giants and for peace like retarded pygmies.
--Lester B. Pearson (1897—1972)
Canadian prime minister [1963—1968].
Speech in Toronto, Canada [14 March 1955].

-

There is a homely adage which runs "Speak softly and
carry a big stick, you will go far." If the American
nation will speak softly and yet build and keep at a
pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient
navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
Address, Minnesota State Fair [2 September 1901].


We need to keep in a condition of preparedness,
especially as regards our navy, not because we
want war, but because we desire to stand with
those whose plea for peace is listened to with
respectful attention.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
In a speech in New York City [11 November 1902].

-

If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week
for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days;
if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am
ready now.
--Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].
In Josephus Daniels _The Wilson Era_ [1946].


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