Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
Gordon AllportRead
People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them.
Interpretation
Awareness and acknowledgment of one's prejudices is the first step toward overcoming them.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-awareness in addressing and eliminating personal prejudices. By recognizing and feeling shame about our biases, we open ourselves up to change and growth, fostering a more inclusive and understanding society.
In practice
In a discussion about diversity, this quote can highlight the importance of acknowledging biases.
Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.
Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant path, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
To crank myself up I stood on a jack and ran myself up. I tightened myself like a bolt. I inserted myself in a vise-clamp and wound the handle till the pressure built. I drank coffee in titrated doses. It was a tricky business, requiring the finely tuned judgment of a skilled anesthesiologist. There was a tiny range within which coffee was effective, short of which it was useless, and beyond which, fatal.
I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection.
People should be more like animals . . . they should be more intuitive; they should not be too conscious of what they do while they do it.
On good days, if you trust life, life has to answer you.
Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?
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