“It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth.”

—  Reginald Rose , Twelve Angry Men

Source: Twelve Angry Men

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obsc…" by Reginald Rose?
Reginald Rose photo
Reginald Rose 3
American screenwriter 1920–2002

Related quotes

Adlai Stevenson photo

“Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice dies hard.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

According to "The Home Book of American Quotations" (1967), by Bruce Bohle, Stevenson said this in an address to the United Nations on October 1, 1963

Karl Popper photo

“When we enter a new situation in life and are confronted by a new person, we bring with us the prejudices of the past and our previous experiences of people. These prejudices we project upon the new person. Indeed, getting to know a person is largely a matter of withdrawing projections; of dispelling the smoke screen of what we imagine he is like and replacing it with the reality of what he is actually like.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Anthony Storr as quoted in The Observer (12 July 1970)
Misattributed

Anatole France photo

“He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.”

Anatole France book The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Il se flattait d'être sans préjugés, et cette prétention était à elle seule un gros préjugé.
Pt. II, ch. 4
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)

Gunnar Myrdal photo

“White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in its turn, gives support to white prejudice. White prejudice and Negro standards thus mutually ‘cause’ each other.”

Gunnar Myrdal book An American Dilemma

Source: An American Dilemma (1944), p. 75

“Our prejudices — we all have them — are part of our personality structure. The problem is that our prejudices may lie lurking at the bottom of the subterranean mind where the slowly ooze up and color our thinking without our knowing it.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: How to Argue and Win Every Time (1995), Ch. 6 : The Power of Prejudice : Examining the Garment, Bleaching the Stain, p. 74

Paul Robeson photo

“In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

HUAC Testimony

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

I, xviii, 37. Modern translation by J.H. Taylor
De Genesi ad Litteram

Tryon Edwards photo

“He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kind of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 438.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“We need to keep our minds free from prejudice and bias”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)
Context: The great difficulty in combating unfair propaganda, or even in recognizing it, arises from the fact* that at the present time we confront so many new and technical problems that it is an enormous task to keep ourselves accurately informed concerning them. In this respect, you gentlemen of the press face the same perplexities that are encountered by legislators and government administrators. Whoever deals with current public questions is compelled to rely greatly upon the information and judgments of experts and specialists. Unfortunately, not all experts are to be trusted as entirely disinterested. Not all specialists are completely without guile. In our increasing dependence on specialized authority, we tend to become easier victims for the propagandists, and need to cultivate sedulously the habit of the open mind. No doubt every generation feels that its problems are the most intricate and baffling that have ever been presented for solution. But with all recognition of the disposition to exaggerate in this respect, I think we can fairly say that our times in all their social and economic aspects are more complex than any past period. We need to keep our minds free from prejudice and bias. Of education, and of real information we cannot get too much. But of propaganda, which is tainted or perverted information, we cannot have too little.

Related topics