Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
Interpretation
Prejudice serves as a temporary refuge for those struggling to make sense of the world.
In this quote by Ben Hecht, the metaphor of a raft symbolizes how individuals who feel lost or overwhelmed may cling to prejudiced beliefs as a means of finding safety and stability. Instead of confronting deeper truths or complexities, the 'shipwrecked mind' resorts to simplistic, often misguided assumptions that provide an illusion of control and security, ultimately hindering personal growth and understanding.
In practice
In a speech addressing the importance of open-mindedness and acceptance.
Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.
Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women's hair rhapsodically described, women's faces acclaimed in odelike language.
There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.
They believe themselves Lucifer's equals, Cain, all these pitiful little gnats. But there is only one that we have ever owned to be our superior. There is but one greater than us, and to him... to him we no longer speak.
Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.
The superiority of one man's opinion over another's is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.
I study religion because I find it fascinating and problematic. But I struggle with the idea of what religion is, what being religious means. A lot of people assume that if you write about early Christianity, you must be some kind of Sunday-school teacher.
Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
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