Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume ... that we really know the score.... [But] this is not an easy assignment. [As] Santayana wrote, 'Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one's equation written out.'

It is not that we have class prejudice, but only that we find comfort and ease in our own class. And normally there are plenty of people of our own class, or race, or religion to play, live, and eat with, and to marry.

The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock.

There is a story of an Oxford student who once remarked, "I despise all Americans, but have never met one I didn't like."

As partisans of our own way of life, we cannot help thinking in a partisan manner.

The outlines of the needed psychology of becoming can be discovered by looking within ourselves; for it is knowledge of our own uniqueness that supplies the first, and probably the best, hints for acquiring orderly knowledge of others.

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and "patriotism" . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.