What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seems to make no sense, any more than malaria or meningitis makes sense.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the irrational nature of anti-Semitism, comparing it to senseless diseases.
Paul Johnson's quote draws attention to the incomprehensible and baseless nature of anti-Semitism, likening it to diseases that afflict humanity without logical explanation. Over centuries, this form of prejudice has persisted despite its lack of rationale, prompting the historian to reflect on why such hatred continues to exist and affect society in a manner similar to uncontrollable illnesses.
In practice
During a lecture on social justice, I might use this quote to illustrate the irrational nature of prejudice.
Indeed it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting - not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities - that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals.
The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.
The image of the scientist who puts the pursuit of truth before anything else has been shattered and replaced by a man on the make or a quasi-religious enthusiast who wants to prove his case at any cost. Science is becoming the tool of campaigning warfare, in which truth is the first casualty.
If anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it.
Civilizations come and go; they conquer the earth and crumble into dust; but faith survives every desolation.
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Early on I decided that fishing would be my way of looking at the world. First it taught me to look at rivers. Lately it has been teaching me how to look at people, myself included.
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