Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor.
Interpretation
Men often fail to critically examine their own biases, especially those that benefit them.
This quote by Samuel Johnson highlights the tendency of individuals to overlook their own prejudices, particularly when these biases work in their favor. It suggests that self-reflection and honest assessment of oneβs beliefs and biases is a difficult yet necessary task in the pursuit of personal growth and understanding. By acknowledging our prejudices, we can cultivate a more genuine perspective and foster greater empathy toward others.
In practice
In a discussion about social justice, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of recognizing personal biases.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
If we steal a man's purse we are thieves. If we steal twelve hundred islands we are patriots. If you steal a man's money you will be sent to the penitentiary. If you steal his liberty you will be sent to the White House.
He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all
When the voice of truth rises from the minarets, the Buddha smiles, and the broken chain of history reconnects.
It violates right order whenever capital so employs the working or wage-earning classes as to divert business and economic activity entirely to its own arbitrary will and advantage, without any regard to the human dignity of the workers, the social character of economic life, social justice, and the common good.
What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.
Whatever its symbol - cross or crescent or whatever - that symbol is man's reminder of his duty inside the human race.
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