Quotes about bias

A collection of quotes on the topic of bias, people, use, other.

Quotes about bias

“To a very large extent, which religion you accept and which you reject are accidents of birth. And after you’ve been religious for years, and surrounded by those who believe likewise, you become emotionally invested in your faith’s truth. This makes you more susceptible to confirmation bias and less likely to be skeptical about your beliefs.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 83-84

Truth, Faith, Religion, Birth

“Human beings are poor examiners, subject to superstition, bias, prejudice, and a PROFOUND tendency to see what they want to see rather than what is really there.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

“Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: Sceptical Essays

Stupidity

“My only request is that you will not quote me at random, or selectively, or out of context. I have noticed again and again that the average scholar from the West is very scrupulous when it comes to presenting other people's point of view. But I cannot say the same about Western scholars with a conscious Christian bias. Very recently I had a shocking experience from the Southeast Asia correspondent of the Time magazine. I found him absolutely dishonest.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Jesus Christ, Artifice for Aggression, 1994

People, Quotes, Time

“The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Love, Men, Children, People

“And yet, in our rush to respond to a very real and novel set of threats, the risk of government overreach -- the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security -- also became more pronounced. […] intelligence agencies cannot function without secrecy, which makes their work less subject to public debate. Yet there is an inevitable bias not only within the intelligence community, but among all of us who are responsible for national security, to collect more information about the world, not less. So in the absence of institutional requirements for regular debate -- and oversight that is public, as well as private or classified -- the danger of government overreach becomes more acute. And this is particularly true when surveillance technology and our reliance on digital information is evolving much faster than our laws.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Review of Signals Intelligence Speech (June 2014)

World, Law, Intelligence, Communication

“Mr. MADISON said that he had brought with him into the Convention a strong bias in favor of an enumeration and definition of the powers necessary to be exercised by the national Legislature; but had also brought doubts concerning its practicability. His wishes remained unaltered; but his doubts had become stronger. What his opinion might ultimately be he could not yet tell. But he should shrink from nothing which should be found essential to such a form of Govt. as would provide for the safety, liberty and happiness of the community. This being the end of all our deliberations, all the necessary means for attaining it must, however reluctantly, be submitted to.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Madison's notes (31 May 1787)
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)

Exercises, Communication, Strong, Happiness

“In organisms of all kinds the young are launched upon their careers endowed with a certain amount of biological capital derived from their parents. This varies enormously in amount in different species, but, in all, there has been, before the offspring is able to lead an independent existence, a certain expenditure of nutriment in addition, almost universally, to some expenditure of time or activity, which the parents are induced by their instincts to make for the advantage of their young. Let us consider the reproductive value of these offspring at the moment when this parental expenditure on their behalf has just ceased. If we consider the aggregate of an entire generation of such offspring it is clear that the total reproductive value of the males in this group is exactly equal to the total value of all the females, because each sex must supply half the ancestry of all future generations of the species. From this it follows that the sex ratio will so adjust itself, under the influence of Natural Selection, that the total parental expenditure incurred in respect of children of each sex, shall be equal; for if this were not so and the total expenditure incurred in producing males, for instance, were less than the total expenditure incurred in producing females, then since the total reproductive value of the males is equal to that of the females, it would follow that those parents, the innate tendencies of which caused them to produce males in excess, would, for the same expenditure, produce a greater amount of reproductive value; and in consequence would be the progenitors of a larger fraction of future generations than would parents having a congenital bias towards the production of females. Selection would thus raise the sex-ratio until the expenditure upon males became equal to that upon females.”

Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection

On natural selection acting on sex ratio: Fisher's principle, Ch. 6, p. 141.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)

Children, Sex, Nature, Parent

“The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anti-capitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise. It is an almost unchallenged dogma that capitalism is done for and that the coming of all-round regimentation of economic activities is both inescapable and highly desirable.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

War, Age

“In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Chapter XXXI "The Philosophy of Logical Analysis"

Truth

“I'd have played against him (Len Bias) for the next 14 years. I would have been in my prime and he would have been in his. I'll never forget what he looked like. He was a 'Wow!' player. When Maryland played and was on television, I watched. It was like, 'I need to watch this guy; I'll be seeing him real soon.'… It was just shocking. Thing is, cocaine was huge then. My brother had been in and out of rehab a few times…. It was a popular drug at the time. And guys I was playing against, like John Lucas and Michael Ray Richardson and John Drew had done cocaine. I was thinking: 'What the hell is up with this cocaine? I should try this once to see what it was all about.' Then, we heard the reports were that Bias only used it once… that it was his first time. When I heard that, it scared me to death… scared the daylights out of me. It scared me into not trying it even once, not going anywhere near it.”

Charles Barkley (1963) American basketball player

Asked to comment on the 20th anniversary of the cocaine-overdose death of Len Bias,

Death, Guy, Hell, Thinking

“Most of the time I got a ticket, I deserved it. I knew why I was pulled over. But there were times when I didn’t. The data shows that this is not an aberration. It doesn’t mean each case is a problem. It means that when you aggregate all the cases and you look at it, you’ve gotta say that there’s some racial bias in the system.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama Racial Profiling (10-27-2015) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-racial-profiling_us_562fde34e4b00aa54a4ba5f2 2015

Problem, Time

“That’s what we must pray for, each of us: a new heart. Not a heart of stone, but a heart open to the fears and hopes and challenges of our fellow citizens. […] Because with an open heart, we can learn to stand in each other’s shoes and look at the world through each other’s eyes, so that maybe the police officer sees his own son in that teenager with a hoodie who's kind of goofing off but not dangerous and the teenager -- maybe the teenager will see in the police officer the same words and values and authority of his parents. With an open heart, we can abandon the overheated rhetoric and the oversimplification that reduces whole categories of our fellow Americans not just to opponents, but to enemies. With an open heart, those protesting for change will guard against reckless language going forward, look at the model set by the five officers we mourn today, acknowledge the progress brought about by the sincere efforts of police departments like this one in Dallas, and embark on the hard but necessary work of negotiation, the pursuit of reconciliation. With an open heart, police departments will acknowledge that, just like the rest of us, they are not perfect; that insisting we do better to root out racial bias is not an attack on cops, but an effort to live up to our highest ideals. […] With an open heart, we can worry less about which side has been wronged, and worry more about joining sides to do right. […] We can decide to come together and make our country reflect the good inside us, the hopes and simple dreams we share.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

World, Fear, Dreams, Hope

“I do like clarity and exact thinking and I believe that very important to mankind because when you allow yourself to think inexactly your prejudices, your bias, your self interest comes in in ways you don't notice and you do bad things without knowing that you are doing them: self deception is very easy. So that I do think clear thinking immensely important.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Television interview ("On clarity and exact thinking" - available on youtube)
1960s

Way, Thinking

“A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. III, ch. 2
The Return of the Native (1878)

Happiness

“My abandonment of former beliefs was, however, never complete. Some things remained with me, and still remain: I still think that truth depends upon a relation to fact, and that facts in general are nonhuman; I still think that man is cosmically unimportant, and that a Being, if there were one, who could view the universe impartially, without the bias of here and now, would hardly mention man, except perhaps in a footnote near the end of the volume; but I no longer have the wish to thrust out human elements from regions where they belong; I have no longer the feeling that intellect is superior to sense, and that only Plato's world of ideas gives access to the 'real' world. I used to think of sense, and of thought which is built on sense, as a prison from which we can be freed by thought which is emancipated from sense. I now have no such feelings. I think of sense, and of thoughts built on sense, as windows, not as prison bars. I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibniz's monads; and I think it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can. But it is also his duty to recognize such distortions as are inevitable from our very nature. Of these, the most fundamental is that we view the world from the point of view of the here and now, not with that large impartiality which theists attribute to the Deity. To achieve such impartiality is impossible for us, but we can travel a certain distance towards it. To show the road to this end is the supreme duty of the philosopher.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 213

Truth, World, Travel, Feeling

“One of the great things about America is that individual citizens and groups of citizens can petition their government, can protest, can speak truth to power. And that is sometimes messy and controversial. But because of that ability to protest and engage in free speech, America, over time, has gotten better. We've all benefited from that.

The abolition movement was contentious. The effort for women to get the right to vote was contentious and messy. There were times when activists might have engaged in rhetoric that was overheated and occasionally counterproductive. But the point was to raise issues so that we, as a society, could grapple with it. The same was true with the Civil Rights Movement, the union movement, the environmental movement, the anti-war movement during Vietnam. And I think what you're seeing now is part of that longstanding tradition.

What I would say is this -- that whenever those of us who are concerned about fairness in the criminal justice system attack police officers, you are doing a disservice to the cause. First of all, any violence directed at police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted. But even rhetorically, if we paint police in broad brush, without recognizing that the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job and are trying to protect people and do so fairly and without racial bias, if our rhetoric does not recognize that, then we're going to lose allies in the reform cause.

Now, in a movement like Black Lives Matter, there's always going to be some folks who say things that are stupid, or imprudent, or overgeneralized, or harsh. And I don't think that you can hold well-meaning activists who are doing the right thing and peacefully protesting responsible for everything that is uttered at a protest site.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Rajoy of Spain After Bilateral Meeting https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/07/10/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-rajoy-spain-after-bilateral (10 July 2016) 2016

Women, War, People, Truth

“I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of Major du Paty de Clam, how Generals Mercier, de Boisdeffre and Gonse became so ensnared in this falsehood that they would later feel compelled to impose it as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intelligence, they seem at worst to have given in to the religious bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail.”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

Truth, Stupidity, Feeling, Intelligence

“And even as we meet conventional threats, we need to face other challenges. And that includes propaganda campaigns that try to whip up fears and divide people from one another. We reject the idea that people cannot live and thrive together, just because they have different backgrounds or speak a different language. And the best antidotes to such distorted thinking are the values that define us. Not just in the Baltics, but throughout Europe, we must acknowledge the inherent dignity and human rights of every person -- because our democracies cannot truly succeed until we root out bias and prejudice, both from our institutions and from our hearts. We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech -- because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth. We have to embrace open and inclusive societies -- because our countries are more successful and more prosperous when we welcome the talents of all our people, including minorities. That’s part of the work that we must do. That's the example we must set.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Truth, Fear, Democracy

“We also know that centuries of racial discrimination -- of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow -- they didn’t simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation. They didn’t just stop when Dr. King made a speech, or the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act were signed. Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress. But we know -- but, America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. […] Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And so when African Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment; when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently, so that if you’re black you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime; when mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have “the talk” about how to respond if stopped by a police officer -- “yes, sir,” “no, sir” -- but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy -- when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and coworkers and fellow church members again and again and again -- it hurts. Surely we can see that, all of us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Life, Death, Children, People

“The interventionists do not approach the study of economic matters with scientific disinterestedness. Most of them are driven by an envious resentment against those whose incomes are larger than their own. This bias makes it impossible for them to see things as they really are. For them the main thing is not to improve the conditions of the masses, but to harm the entrepreneurs and capitalists even if this policy victimizes the immense majority of the people.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

People, Study

“It doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we’re arranged in a hierarchy, that we’re ranked rather than linked.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

The Humanist interview (2012)
Context: It doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we’re arranged in a hierarchy, that we’re ranked rather than linked. I think we’ve learned that we have to contend with these divisions everywhere.

Problem, Learning

“We do have challenges with racial bias -- in our communities, in our criminal justice system, in our society -- the legacy of slavery and segregation. But the fact that we have open debates within America’s own democracy is what allows us to get better.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)
Context: We do have challenges with racial bias -- in our communities, in our criminal justice system, in our society -- the legacy of slavery and segregation. But the fact that we have open debates within America’s own democracy is what allows us to get better. In 1959, the year that my father moved to America, it was illegal for him to marry my mother, who was white, in many American states. When I first started school, we were still struggling to desegregate schools across the American South. But people organized; they protested; they debated these issues; they challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, I’m able to stand here today as an African-American and as President of the United States. That was because of the freedoms that were afforded in the United States that we were able to bring about change.

Justice, Democracy, Communication

“For too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. Perhaps it causes us to examine what we’re doing to cause some of our children to hate. Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal justice system and leads us to make sure that that system is not infected with bias”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: But I don't think God wants us to stop there. For too long, we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. Perhaps it causes us to examine what we’re doing to cause some of our children to hate. Perhaps it softens hearts towards those lost young men, tens and tens of thousands caught up in the criminal justice system and leads us to make sure that that system is not infected with bias; that we embrace changes in how we train and equip our police so that the bonds of trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve make us all safer and more secure. Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don't realize it, so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal. So that we search our hearts when we consider laws to make it harder for some of our fellow citizens to vote. By recognizing our common humanity by treating every child as important, regardless of the color of their skin or the station into which they were born, and to do what’s necessary to make opportunity real for every American -- by doing that, we express God’s grace.

Men, Hate, Children, School

“Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don't realize it, so that we're guarding against not just racial slurs, but we're also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Way

“Grown men, otherwise daring, capable and virile men of accomplishment frequently find themselves terrorized and terrified by ridiculous accusations of bias or impropriety cast by spoon-fed students, indignant sluts, disabled lesbians, bipolar transsexuals, illegal immigrants and the morbidly obese. In the space of a few hundred years, the noble morality of the sovereign has been exchanged for the ignoble morality of the squeaky wheel.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

pg 42
A More Complete Beast (2018)

Men

“What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.”

Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950) African-American historian and writer

Hate, World, History

“And reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)
Context: I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Reality

“Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Fools

“The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict, and laziness.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

“So far, twenty-two people have received the Nobel award in economics. Not one of them has been female—so, to judge only from the past, the most important thing to do if you want to be a Nobel laureate is to be male. I hasten to add that the absence of females is not, I believe, attributable to male chauvinist bias on the part of the Swedish Nobel Committee. I believe that the economics profession as a whole would have been nearly unanimous that, during the period in question, only one female candidate met the relevant standards—the English economist Joan Robinson, who has since died. The failure of the Nobel Committee to award her a prize may well have reflected bias but not sex bias. The economists here will understand what I am talking about. … A second requirement is to be a U. S. citizen. Twelve of the twenty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize were from the United States, four from the United Kingdom, two from Sweden, and one each from four other countries. … Of the twelve Americans who have won the Nobel Prize in economics, nine either studied or taught at the University of Chicago. So the next lesson is to go to the University of Chicago.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

"Milton Friedman" in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates

People, Sex, Failure, Understanding

“Why do my YouTube videos get millions of views even though it’s just some ranty Northerner sat in front of a world map behind a webcam? It’s because people are desperately searching for an alternative. They instinctively know the BBC is bullshitting them. They know that every single story they report is beholden to maintaining the leftist consensus. I mean look at the utter ludicrousness of the “child” migrants who arrived in Croydon. Anyone with functioning brain cells could see these men were not children. Some of them were in their late 30s. The BBC insults our intelligence on a daily basis and only the incredibly naive can’t see that at this point. The BBC still absurdly insists it is impartial when it clearly isn’t, whereas I am honest, up front and open about my bias. People can see an authenticity in me that the likes of the BBC can never provide.”

Paul Joseph Watson (1982) English YouTuber, radio host, writer, editor, and conspiracy theorist

"An interview with Paul Joseph Watson", The Tab (7 November 2016) https://thetab.com/uk/sheffield/2016/11/07/paul-joseph-watson-18264

Men, Children, People, World

“I manage to blast through the ridiculous liberal bias of the media and speak right to the hearts of the people - or at least I try.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Source: 2010s, 2015, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), p. 80

People, Heart

“Between hindsight bias, fake causality, positive bias, anchoring/priming, et cetera et cetera, and above all the dreaded confirmation bias, once an idea gets into your head, it's probably going to stay there.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think http://lesswrong.com/lw/jx/we_change_our_minds_less_often_than_we_think/ (October 2007)

Idea

“In recent years there has been increased interest in the effects of internal communication on decision processes. A number of hypotheses relating the bias in information to the final decision have been proposed. In this paper we discuss two laboratory experiments which were designed to test two such hypotheses. The first experiment tests the hypothesis that cost and sales estimations are made with the implicit assumption that a biased pay-off structure exists. The second experiment tests explicitly the effects of biased and unbiased pay-off structures on estimation within an organization. An analysis of the data for the two experiments is made and some implications for further research are drawn from the results.”

Richard Cyert (1921–1998) American economist

Richard Cyert, James G. March, William H. Starbuck. (1961) "Two experiments on bias and conflict in organisational estimation," Management Science, 254–64; Abstract

Communication, Decision

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

Richard Cyert, James G. March, William H. Starbuck. (1961) "Two experiments on bias and conflict in organisational estimation," Management Science, 254–64; Abstract

Communication, Decision

“What I think needs to be done in 2018 is more dialogue around the ethics, the principles that we can use for the engineers and companies that are building AI [artificial intelligence], so that the choices we make do not cause us to create systems with bias.”

Satya Nadella (1967) CEO of Microsoft appointed on 4 February 2014

Scroll.in: "Artificial intelligence will not kill human jobs, says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella" https://scroll.in/latest/880684/artificial-intelligence-will-not-kill-human-jobs-says-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella (29 May 2018)

Intelligence, Thinking

“Have you yet read Miss Martineau’s and Mr. Atkinson’s new work, Letters on the Nature and Development of Man? If you have not, it would be worth your while to do so. Of the impression this book has made on me, I will not now say much. It is the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism I have ever read; the first unequivocal declaration of disbelief in the existence of a God or a future life I have ever seen. In judging of such exposition and declaration, one would wish entirely to put aside the sort of instinctive horror they awaken, and to consider them in an impartial spirit and collected mood. This I find difficult to do. The strangest thing is, that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank — to receive this bitter bereavement as great gain — to welcome this unutterable desolation as a state of pleasant freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do this if he could? Sincerely, for my own part, do I wish to know and find the Truth; but if this be Truth, well may she guard herself with mysteries, and cover herself with a veil. If this be Truth, man or woman who beholds her can but curse the day he or she was born. I said however, I would not dwell on what I thought; rather, I wish to hear what some other person thinks,--someone whose feelings are unapt to bias his judgment. Read the book, then, in an unprejudiced spirit, and candidly say what you think of it. I mean, of course, if you have time — not otherwise.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on Letters on the Nature and Development of Man (1851), by Harriet Martineau. Letter to James Taylor (11 February 1851) The life of Charlotte Brontë

Life, God, Truth, Books

“Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters overconfidence. In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant cognitive bias. Because optimistic bias is both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think (Part 1): Daniel Kahneman, bloomberg.com, 24 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-24/bias-blindness-and-how-we-truly-think-part-1-daniel-kahneman.html, "Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think" (2011)

World, Decision, Future, Happiness

“There has definitely been a significant bias from the local media like nothing like I have ever experienced, but I intend to have the last laugh when I win tomorrow.”

Karen Handel (1962) American politician

Karen Handel: ‘I Intend to Have the Last Laugh When I Win’ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/19/exclusive-karen-handel-intend-last-laugh-win/ (June 19, 2017)

“The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence, The New York Times, 19 October 2011, 15 May 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, "Don't Blink! The Hazards of Confidence" (2011)

Feeling, Confidence

“One thing we specifically discussed that night was our desire to start a site that would be unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel. We were sick of the anti- Israel bias of the mainstream media and J-Street. By launching Breitbart Jerusalem, the journey comes full circle and a promise between two friends is fulfilled. And in a very real sense, Breitbart News Network returns to its roots.”

Larry Solov (1968) American attorney and media executive

Breitbart News Network: Born In The USA, Conceived In Israel http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/11/17/breitbart-news-network-born-in-the-usa-conceived-in-israel/ (November 17, 2015)

Sense, Freedom, Night

“It is impossible to overstate the significance of this. This is the last citadel for women in our Army. The bias towards officers with an arms corps affiliation in choosing senior leaders has some justification. Close combat is the core business of the Army. But women are already ‘in combat’ due to the changing character of war. Formal recognition of this removes the last defence of those who are resistant to the widest employment of women in the Army, and by extension their promotion to the most senior ranks. It is quite conceivable now that a woman will serve as the Chief of the Army in light of this decision.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Women, War, Business, Decision

“Christ embodies the ideal of human perfection: in Him all bias and defects are removed, and the masculine and feminine virtues are united and their weaknesses redeemed; therefore, His true followers will be progressively exalted over their natural limitations. That is why we see in holy men a tenderness and a truly maternal solicitude for the souls entrusted to them while in holy women there is manly boldness, proficiency, and determination.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace (1932)

Women, Men, Soul, Nature

“This is the essence of the problem. To Dan Rather and to a lot of other powerful members of the chattering class, that which is right of center is conservative. That which is left of center is middle of the road. No wonder they can't recognize their own bias.”

Bernard Goldberg (1945) American journalist

Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (2001)

Problem

“The bias against the show is purely elitist. We’re all like the people on the show – the difference is that some of us speak better, or were born richer. There’s nothing that happens on my show that rich people don’t experience.”

Jerry Springer (1944) American television presenter, former lawyer, politician, news presenter, actor, and musician

Interview with Rebecca Hardy, Daily Mail ‘Weekend’ magazine, 27th June 2009; he commenting here on The Jerry Springer Show.

People

“I actually have something I would use the Department of Education to do. It would be to monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding if it exists.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

As quoted in "Ben Carson has an odd plan for the Dept of Education" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ben-carson-has-odd-plan-the-dept-education, MSNBC (October 22, 2015)

Education

“I never encouraged officers to discuss politics at all, and, as a rule, officers of the navy were exempt from political bias, and considered that it was their duty to heartily support the Government in any measures which might be taken to preserve the Union. This was my view of the subject, and I tried to impress it upon others, and succeeded in excluding politics from the mess-table.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 204

Support

“V. We complain that the Union cause has suffered, and is now suffering immensely, from mistaken deference to Rebel Slavery. Had you, Sir, in your Inaugural Address, unmistakably given notice that, in case the Rebellion already commenced were persisted in, and your efforts to preserve the Union and enforce the laws should be resisted by armed force, you would recognize no loyal person as rightfully held in Slavery by a traitor, we believe the Rebellion would therein have received a staggering if not fatal blow. At that moment, according to the returns of the most recent elections, the Unionists were a large majority of the voters of the Slave States. But they were composed in good part of the aged, the feeble, the wealthy, the timid--the young, the reckless, the aspiring, the adventurous, had already been largely lured by the gamblers and negro-traders, the politicians by trade and the conspirators by instinct, into the toils of Treason. Had you then proclaimed that Rebellion would strike the shackles from the slaves of every traitor, the wealthy and the cautious would have been supplied with a powerful inducement to remain loyal. As it was, every coward in the South soon became a traitor from fear; for Loyalty was perilous, while Treason seemed comparatively safe. Hence the boasted unanimity of the South--a unanimity based on Rebel terrorism and the fact that immunity and safety were found on that side, danger and probable death on ours. The Rebels from the first have been eager to confiscate, imprison, scourge and kill: we have fought wolves with the devices of sheep. The result is just what might have been expected. Tens of thousands are fighting in the Rebel ranks to-day whose, original bias and natural leanings would have led them into ours.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Death, Age, Fear, Law

“By patronizing the Yellow Church we maintain peace among the Mongols. This being an important task we cannot but protect this (religion). (In doing so) we do not show any bias, nor do we wish to adulate the Tibetan priests as (was done during the) Yuan dynasty.”

Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) emperor of the Qing Dynasty

Inscription on the Lama Shuo stele in 1792 in the Yonghe Gong temple in Beijing Source: Lopez 1999 http://books.google.com/books?id=mjUHF7kQfVAC&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 20. Source: Berger 2003 http://books.google.com/books?id=BsyFU9FwCIkC&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 35.

Peace, Religion

“The social sciences are in a special difficulty because they cover the same field of human behavior as literature. As science, they must claim to improve upon the prejudice and superstition of common sense, and are therefore compelled to restate the language of common sense, full of implication and innuendo, in irreproachable, blameless, scientific prose innocent of bias or any other subtlety.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

Behavior, Literature, Sense, Science

“Scientific method isn't about winning popularity contests. It's also not about being with the majority opinion. It isn't supposed be determined by politics. It is about attempting to limit bias or prejudice in the results.”

David A. Ridenour

David A. Ridenour, "Senators Try to Stifle the Global Warming Debate," Chicago Sun Times, November 16, 2006

“The eulogy of the non-lover in the speech of Lysias … stresses the fact that the non-lover … does not commit extreme acts under the influence of passions. Since he acts from calculation, he never has occasion for remorse. … The non-lover demonstrates his superiority through prudence and objectivity. … We must now observe how these points of superiority correspond to those of “semantically purified” speech, … the kind of speech approaching pure notation in the respect that it communicates abstract intelligence without impulsion. It is a simple instrumentality, showing no affection for the object of its symbolizing and incapable of inducing bias in the hearer. In its ideal conception, it would have less power to move than 2 + 2 = 4, since it is generally admitted that mathematical equations may have the beauty of elegance, and hence are not above suspicion where beauty is suspect. But this neuter language will be an unqualified medium of transmission of meanings from mind to mind, and by virtue of it minds can remain in an unprejudiced relationship to the world and also to other minds. … Instead of passion, it offers the serviceability of objectivity … It distrusts any departure from the literal and prosaic.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” pp. 6-7.
The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)

World, Beauty, Intelligence, Communication

“Interdeterminacy was a figure-ground problem arising from incongruity between the visual bias of classical science and the new acoustic sensibilities.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 44

Problem, Science

“The hope of a positive expected gain lies in detecting a wheel with sufficient bias.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Four, Coins, Wheels, And Oddments, p. 113

Hope

“Mind control is the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles. … It seems to me that at the very heart of the controversy over the existence of mind control is a bias toward believing in the power of people to resist the power of situational forces, a belief in individual will power and faith to overcome all evil adversity. It is Jesus modeling resistance against the temptations of Satan, and not the vulnerability of Adam and Eve to deception. More recently, examples abound that challenge this person-power misattribution.”

Benjamin Zablocki (1941) American sociologist

Benjamin Zablocki (2002); As cited in: Herbert W Simons, PH.D., ‎Jean Jones (2011) Persuasion and Contemporary Culture. p. 343

People, Faith, Behavior, Motivation

“It is bias to think that the art of war is just for killing people. It is not to kill people, it is to kill evil. It is a stratagem to give life to many people by killing the evil of one person.”

Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) samurai and daimyo of the early Edo period

As quoted in The Japanese Art of War (1991) by Thomas Cleary

Life, War, People, Art

“The bias of each medium of communication is far more distorting than the deliberate lie.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

JQ. Journalism quarterly, Volume 50, Association for Education in Journalism, 1973, p. 145
1970s

Lie, Communication

“Giving people a voice on the one hand, and keeping the community and people safe on the other hand. Our bias tends to be to want to give people a voice and let people express a wide range of opinions. I don’t think that’s a liberal or conservative thing; those are the words in the U. S.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

In an interview with Kara Swisher as quoted in Zuckerberg: The Recode interview https://www.recode.net/2018/7/18/17575156/mark-zuckerberg-interview-facebook-recode-kara-swisher (July 18, 2018), Recode.

People, Communication, Thinking

“Acosta: This whole notion of they have to learn English before they get to the United States, are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?
Miller: I am shocked at your statement, that you think only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English. It actually reveals your cosmopolitan, er, bias, to a shocking degree, that in your mind… No, this an amazing moment…
Acosta: It sounds like you're trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country through this policy.
Miller: Jim, that is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you've ever said, and for you that's still a really… The notion that you think that this is a racist bill is so wrong and so insulting.”

Stephen Miller (1985) political advisor for policy

Exchanges with CNN's Jim Acosta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0izucPBY4k during a briefing on legislation that would seek to curtail legal immigration and create a new points-based green card system (2 August 2017) 2010s

People, Thinking, Learning, Country

“I am convinced of the urgent need for democratic people to think clearly without the distortions due to unconscious bias and unrecognised ignorance. Our failures in thinking in part due to our faults which we could to some extent overcome were we to see clearly how these faults arise.”

Susan Stebbing (1885–1943) British philosopher

As quoted in Thinking to Some Purpose (1939), Preface

People, Failure, Thinking, Parting

“This theme of mismeasurement interacts with the designation of the one hundred years between 1870 and 1970 as the “special century.” Measurement errors are greatest in the early years, both in the scope of the standard of living and in the extent of price index bias. Clearly the welfare benefits to consumers in the categories of life entirely omitted from GDP were greatest long ago: the transition from the scrub board to the automatic washing machine was a more important contributor to consumer welfare than the shift from manual to electronic washing machine controls or from a twelve-pound tub to an eighteen pound tub. The most important unmeasured benefit of all, the extension of life expectancy, occurred much more rapidly from 1890 to 1950 than afterward.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 2016, p. 13

Life, Error

“He Titian is the least mannered and consequently the most varied of artists. Mannered talents have but one bias, one usage only. They are more apt to follow the impulse of the hand than to control it. Those that are less mannered must be more varied, for they continually respond to genuine emotion.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

5 January 1857 (p. 326)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

“must we not say that it is part of the deep sickness of our culture that ever since Descartes, we have been seduced by the idea of a kind of knowledge which could not be doubted, in which we would be absolutely secure from personal risk? And has not this seduction taken two forms which, even if they disclaim all relationship with each other, are really twin brothers? One is biblical fundamentalism which supposes that adherence to the text of the Bible frees me from the risk of error and therefore gives me a security which does not depend on my own discernment of the truth. The other is a type of scientism which supposes that science is simply a transcript of reality, of the "facts" which simply have to be accepted and call for no personal decision on my part, a kind of knowledge which is "objective" and free from all the bias of subjectivity.”

Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) Christian missionary

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Eerdmans, 1989 (reprinted 2002),48-49.

Truth, Error, Idea, Knowledge

“Technologies themselves, regardless of content, produce a hemispheric bias in the users.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 71

“The people who have sufficient passion for the truth to give the truth a chance to prevail, if it runs counter to their bias, are in a minority. How important is this "minority?" It is difficult to say at this point, for, at the present time their influence on governmental decisions is not perceptible.”

Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) Physicist and biologist

Are We on the Road to War?

People, Truth, Decision, Passion

“A friend last weekend said he thought the story about the University of New Hampshire's website publishing a bias-free language guide, which declared that use of the word "American" is "problematic," was a hoax. Of course, it was real.”

Dan Henninger

"The Joy of Madness" http://friesian.com/antiam.htm, The Wall Street Journal (17 September 2015), A13.

Universe

“At least I can shout to the world this--I'm my own midget. The mistakes will be my mistakes--the failures will have my fiat--the successes, if any or none, will not be subject to people who worry about thick lenses, long noses, or advertising agency or affiliate bias.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

Describing his frustration with his treatment by the new CBS management (1962), The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson.

People, World, Failure, Success

“The Hindus do not pay particular attention to alchemy, but no nation is entirely free from it, and one nation has more bias for it than another, which must not be construed as proving intelligence or ignorance; for we find that many intelligent people are entirely given to alchemy, whilst ignorant people ridicule the art and its adepts.”

Al-Biruni (973–1048) Persian scholar and polymath

Alberuni, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1
From Alberuni's India

People, Art, Intelligence

“The reason propaganda works is that most people are too involved or too stupid to recognize it as propaganda. People claim to understand the bias and filter it out, but that's absurd. Of course they don't.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2002, Ann Coulter : Left Is 'out to Destroy the Country' (2002)

People, Stupidity, Understanding

“Even European philosophers have taken notice that most of what we take for knowledge is nothing but bias and prejudice.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

Knowledge

“In the ideal socialist state, power will not attract power freaks. People who make decisions will show no slightest bias towards their own interests. There will be no way for a clever man to bend the institutions to serve his own ends. And the rivers will run uphill.”

David D. Friedman book The Machinery of Freedom

Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, p.108

People, Way, Decision

“I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Problem, Thinking, Country

“I love to experiment with all styles, and do not have any particular prejudice or bias towards any specific style. These works appear, and they turn out, the way they should. I do not decide in what style I want to paint. I am only experimenting. Even Picasso, when he arrived at Cubism, had already experimented with a lot of other styles.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Source: Ayandegan (1973), p. 4

Love, Way, Appearance, Painting

“To our western eyes, the painted images are the most prominent component of a corpus of artistic expression. This Western bias, a particularly Eurocentric bias, has been pervasive and deep. …it has resulted in a lack of attention to, and concern about, prehistoric art of equal and sometimes greater antiquity in eastern and southern Africa.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art, Painting

“Well, except for ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, the Washington Post, and about another 100 newspapers, I find little evidence of liberal bias in the media.”

Rupert Murdoch (1931) Australian-American media mogul

Asked about liberal bias in the mainstream media.[citation needed]

Time

“This deeply alarming statistic points to one of the most pernicious aspects of the conduct our investigation uncovered: that these policing practices disproportionately harm African American residents. In fact, our review of the evidence found no alternative explanation for the disproportionate impact on African American residents other than implicit and explicit racial bias.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

“Our government has the weirdest bias against cannabis. There's no reason for everybody to be so afraid of it. It's not the antichrist the DEA makes it out to be. Industrial hemp is a very useful plant. I challenged the attorney general to get rid of the criminal stigma associated with hemp so we can look at it in terms of how it might be useful. And government has no business telling us what we can and can't use for pain relief.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)

Pain, Business

“History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

First and Last Loves (1952).

History

“I pointed to an article with bold headlines reporting that the police had refused to allow the PAP to hold a rally at Empress Place, and then to the last paragraph where in small type it added the meeting would take place where we were now. I compared this with a prominent report about an SPA rally. This was flagrant bias.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, 1998
1990s

“Religion is heavily laden with the kind of confirmation bias that makes people see their own faiths as true and all others as false. In other words, religion is replete with features to help people fool themselves.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 29

People, Faith, Religion, Fools

“In the end, religious investigations of “truth,” unlike those of science, are deeply dependent on confirmation bias. You start with what you were taught to believe, or what you want to believe, and then accept only those facts that support your prejudices. This is the basis for the theological practice of “apologetics,” designed to defend religion against counterarguments and disconfirming evidence…. In contrast, science has no apologetics, for we test our conclusions by trying to find counterevidence.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 66-67

Truth, Religion, Support, Science

“Speciesism—the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term—is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.”

Peter Singer book Animal Liberation

Source: Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (1975), Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal

Thinking

“Bias used to say that men ought to calculate life both as if they were fated to live a long and a short time, and that they ought to love one another as if at a future time they would come to hate one another; for that most men were bad.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Bias, 5.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages

Love, Life, Men, Hate

“This implicit denigration of objectivity, and of the way science is done, irritates me immensely. It privileges anecdotes over data, “lived experience” over objective tests, and confirmation bias over uncomfortable truths. But that is the way that many humanities scholars, corrupted by postmodernism, have operated. Denying or denigrating an objective search for truth, they’re free to say whatever they want, or “discover” whatever they find ideologically convenient.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Feminist geography at Dartmouth https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/feminist-geography-at-dartmouth/" April 2, 2018

Truth, Way, Search, Science

“Whenever there is a real likelihood that the Judge would, from kindred or any other cause, have a bias in favour of one of the parties, it would be very wrong in him to act, and we are not to be understood to say that where there is a real bias of this sort this Court would not interfere.”

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn (1813–1896) British judge

Reg. v. Rand (1867), L. R. 1 Q. B. 230.

“A major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one’s own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias.”

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Neither History Nor Praxis,” pp. 38-39.
Outside Ethics (2005)

History, Nature, Study, Help

“Even in times of war, you can see current events in their historical perspective, provided that your passion for the truth prevails over your bias in favor of your own nation.”

Leó Szilárd (1898–1964) Physicist and biologist

Are We on the Road to War?

War, Truth, Passion, Time

“Gautier says, “Baudelaire abhorred philanthropy, progressivists, utilitarians, humanitarians and utopianists.” In other words, Baudelaire condemned Rousseausism in all its forms. Today, Rousseausism has so triumphed that the arts and the avant-garde are synonymous with liberalism, an error enforced by literature teachers, with their humanist bias. I follow the Decadents in trying to drive Rousseauist benevolence out of the discourse in art and literature. The Decadents satirized the liberal faith in progress with sizzling prophecies of catastrophe and cultural collapse.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 429

Faith, Art, Error, Literature

“The legal bias for special protection for women has begun to wreak havoc with the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 238.

Women

“Once I appealed to distinguish words "gay" and "homosexual" (…). "Gayship" is a political homosexualism, a sort of left-wing ideology based on a bias against traditional lifestyle (…). Homosexualism is a sexual preference.”

Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz (1964) Polish writer

Ziemkiewicz's blog http://blog.rp.pl/ziemkiewicz/2007/08/31/niech-homo-bedzie-homo/

“Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person -- you already feel fortunate. Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders -- not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

People, Feeling, Optimism, Decision

“Although Bertrand Russell suffered unpopularity in some quarters for his role as a political dissenter, he enjoyed that role immensely. There was more than a touch of exhibitionism in the riskless sit-downs of his last years when he made well-publicized gestures to 'Ban the Bomb' that were as futile as they were ill-advised. I once wondered aloud to him whether his temperamental bias toward nonconformity and dissent was an expression not so much of intellectual courage as of the aristocrat's disdain of the commoner and his desire to épater le bourgeois. He replied with disarming frankness: 'Hook, I think you have something there…”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

Out of Step (1985)

Courage, Thinking, Suffering

“I have to think that because NASA chose to co-author this paper [LaDochy et al., 2007] with researchers at California State University, that some of the statewide "global warming as man-made problem bias" crept into the thinking for the purpose of this paper, i. e. "we need another study to show that its getting hotter so action is justified."”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

California Heating Up, a new NASA/CSU study finds, but data questionable http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/03/28/california-heating-up-a-new-nasacsu-study-finds-but-data-questionable/, wattsupwiththat.com, March 28, 2007. 2007

Problem, Thinking, Study, Universe

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us…. And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?

It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less. Injustice and violence are still reigning; but they are now in the service of degraded passions.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227

Men, Faith, Way, Soul

“Israel is invading Lebanon and has killed thirty times more Lebanese civilians than have died in Israel, so it’s you who should be justifying the evident bias which is written on every line on your face, and is in every nuance of your voice, and is loaded in every question that you ask.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Interview on Sky News http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html, August 6, 2006 Asked to justify supporting Hezbollah.

Question, Time

“Bear in mind, also, and the fact is an important one, that the framers of the Constitution sat with doors closed, and that this was done purposely, that nothing but the result of their labours should be seen, and that that result should be judged of by the people free from any of the bias shown in the debates. It should also be borne in mind, and the fact is still more important, that the debates in the convention that framed the Constitution, and by means of which a pro-slavery interpretation is now attempted to be forced upon that instrument, were not published till more than a quarter of a century after the presentation and the adoption of the Constitution.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

People

“The evidence of racial bias comes not only from statistics, but also from remarks made by police, city and court officials. A thorough examination of the records – including a large volume of work emails – shows a number of public servants expressing racist comments or gender discrimination; demonstrating grotesque views and images of African Americans in which they were seen as the “other,” called “transient” by public officials, and characterized as lacking personal responsibility.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Personality

“To say that we must attend meticulously to the environmental case does not mean that we must go to the other extreme and wholly neglect the economic case. Here we must beware of some of our friends. For parts of the conservationist lobby would do precisely this. Their approach is hostile to growth in principle and indifferent to the needs of ordinary people. It has a manifest class bias, and reflects a set of middle and upper class value judgements. Its champions are often kindly and dedicated people. But they are affluent and fundamentally, though of course not consciously, they want to kick the ladder down behind them. They are highly selective in their concern, being militant mainly about threats to rural peace and wildlife and well loved beauty spots: they are little concerned with the far more desperate problem of the urban environment in which 80 per cent of our fellow citizens live…As I wrote many years ago, those enjoying an above average standard of living should be chary of admonishing those less fortunate on the perils of material riches. Since we have many less fortunate citizens, we cannot accept a view of the environment which is essentially elitist, protectionist and anti-growth. We must make our own value judgement based on socialist objectives: and that judgement must…be that growth is vital, and that its benefits far outweigh its costs.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

'Class hypocrisy of the conservationists', The Times (8 January 1971), p. 10
An extract from the Fabian pamphlet A Social Democratic Britain.

Love, Hostility, People, Peace

“When Coleridge said that all men are born either Platonists or Aristotelians, he was saying that all men tend to be either acoustic or visual in their sensory bias.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 113

Men