Bias Quotes

He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION.

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Even though the Judge would charge the jury that they should listen to all the evidence before they made up their minds, the chances were likely that 100% of them will have already decided if William was guilty or not before the trial was over.

~ Kenneth Eade

Intuition matters but, pay more attention to the unconscious bias.

~ Pearl Zhu

The author observers that better technology actually increased division because rival outlets funded by rival parties could get their slant to the partisans

~ Harold Holzer

When dealing with critics always remember this: Critics judge things based on what is outside of their content of understanding.

~ Shannon L. Alder

This book is dedicated to Israel's constructive and nuanced critics, whose rational voices are too often drowned out by the exaggerations, demonizations, and hate-filled lies put forth by Israel's enemies. Criticism is the lifeblood of democracy and a sure sign of admiration for an imperfect democracy seeking to improve itself.

~ Alan Dershowitz

It is almost impossible for contemporaries to judge the true value of discoveries, or to give the proper position to the men of their own time who make these discoveries. The Surgeon-General of the Public Health Service expected the greatest results to flow from his commission of medical officers, but the conclusions of the Board turned out to be all wrong, while he did not notice the report from his own subordinate, Dr. H. R. Carter, which turned out to be pure gold and was one of the great steps in establishing the true method of the transmission of Yellow Fever.

~ William Crawford Gorgas

We encounter regression to the mean almost every day of our lives. We should try to anticipate it, recognize it, and not be fooled by it.

~ Gary Smith

I expected, as I approached the corporate world, to enter a brisk, logical, nonsense-free zone, almost like the military - or a disciplined, up-to-date military anyway - in its focus on concrete results. How else would companies survive fierce competition? But what I encountered was a culture riven with assumptions unrelated to those that underlie the fact- and logic-based worlds of, say science and journalism - a culture addicted to untested habits, paralyzed by conformity, and shot through with magical thinking.

~ Barbara Ehrenreich

While most people love certain species to pieces (e.g. cats and dogs), others are more loved in pieces (e.g. cows and pigs)

~ Mango Wodzak

An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny.

~ Steven Pinker

All my life I'd been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine's thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.

~ Kathryn Stockett

Majority is not always right. The fact that many people are in support of a wrong thing does not make the thing right. After all, the number of persons who with poor reasoning capacity is higher than those with better reasoning capacity.I don't read or care about majority's stance on a particular issue before expressing mine. I look at issues critically before expressing mine, not minding the reaction of majority.There are more foolish people than there are wise people. People who think deeply and critically are fewer compared to those with poor thinkingI can handle majority but can't handle my conscience

~ Omosohwofa Casey

Majority is not always right. The fact that many people are in support of a wrong thing does not make the thing right. After all, the number of persons with poor reasoning capacity is higher than those with better reasoning capacity.I don't read or care about majority's stance on a particular issue before expressing mine. I look at issues critically before expressing mine, not minding the reaction of majority.There are more foolish people than there are wise people. People who think deeply and critically are fewer compared to those with poor thinkingI can handle majority but can't handle my conscience

~ Omosohwofa Casey

Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias? On a couple of things, maybe. Compared to the American public at large, probably a slightly higher percentage of journalists, because of thier enhanced power of discernment, realize they know a gay person or two, and are, therefore, less frightened of them.

~ Al Franken

I pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed--there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases.

~ David Byrne

How would we flood village and city with our information? The people must learn how well I govern them. How would they know if we didn't tell them?

~ Frank Herbert

(Everyone, I guess, sees their position as the neutral one and everyone else's position as biassed. I wonder why 177 minutes of the Today programme is completely secular; you feel horribly excluded by 3 minutes of Thought for Today. I see a sinister anti-religious bias when David Attenborough goes through a whole series without ever once aying On the other hand maybe God made it all; you feel that 30 minutes of hymn singing on Sunday evening amounts to theocratic oppression.)

~ Andrew Rilstone

Those who make objectivity a religion are liars. they are scared of human pain. They dont want to be objective, it's a lie: they want to be objects, so as not to suffer.

~ Eduardo Galeano

Look at the language. If a scientist delivers the simple, unconditional, absolutely certain statements that politicians and journalists want, he is talking as an activist, not a scientist.

~ Daniel Gardner

What we hear and see through the filter of bias becomes our truth, while planting the seeds of conflict.

~ Charles F. Glassman

We may fondly imagine that we are impartial seekers after truth, but with a few exceptions, to which I know that I do not belong, we are influenced—and sometimes strongly—by our personal bias; and we give our best thoughts to those ideas which we have to defend.

~ August Krogh

Implicit [in the psychiatric literature] is a set of normative assumptions regarding the father's prerogatives and the mother's obligations within the family, The father, like the children, is presumed to be entitled to the mother's love, nurturance, and care. In fact, his dependent needs actually supersede those of the children, for if a mother falls to provide the accustomed intentions, it is taken for granted that some other female must be found to take her place. The oldest daughter is a frequent choice... The father's wish, indeed his right, to continue to receive female nurturance, whatever the circumstances, is accepted without question.

~ Judith Lewis Herman

When we hide discrimination under the guise of 'religious freedom,' we make a mockery of human rights.

~ Dashanne Stokes

There was no one to blame but the mighty, ruthless stranger. Thus was complexity reduced to demonology, which is a defining feature of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, or, indeed, any anti-ism.

~ Josef Joffe

The nation which indulges toward another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to it animosity or two its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and it's interest.

~ George Washington

It is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

~ Lord Paulmerston

By calling into question the very ideal of a universal, autonomous reason (which was, in the Enlightenment, the basis for rejecting religious thought) and further demonstrating that all knowledge is grounded in narrative or myth, Lyotard relativizes (secular) philosophy's claim to autonomy and so grants the legitimacy of a philosophy that grounds itself in Christian faith. Previously such a distinctly Christian philosophy would have been exiled from the 'pure' arena of philosophy because of its 'infection' with bias and prejudice. Lyotard's critique, however, demonstrates that no philosophy - indeed, no knowledge - is untainted by prejudice or faith commitments. In this way the playing field is leveled, and new opportunities to voice a Christian philosophy are created. Thus Lyotard's postmodern critique of metanarratives, rather than being a formidable foe of Christian faith and thought, can in fact be enlisted as an ally in the construction of a Christian philosophy.

~ James K.a. Smith

Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.

~ Rachel E. Goldsmith

Your computer monitor is a kind a one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.

~ Eli Pariser

I'm a professional journalist. Making up lies to fit the facts - it's what we do.

~ Andrew Klavan

A woman of European heritage sporting a preacher's collar had the opposite effect of a Muslim woman wearing a hijab. She used her privilege and the favored religion to look like a golden child.

~ Eric Jerome Dickey

Preacher pulled her gun to her lap, the trigger aimed toward the stranger. . . . He stared at her like he was ready to dial 911, until he saw she was of European heritage, saw her clerical collar, saw the Bible on the dashboard. White, blond, and Christian. Trifecta. The man's shoulders relaxed and he smiled, waved, and kept going.

~ Eric Jerome Dickey

The biased use of pronouns serves to perpetuate the culturally based myth that men are perpetrators and women are victims. This myth is extremely damaging to the millions of male victims of sexual and physical abuse who live unacknowledged by our society.

~ David Lisak

When theology recognizes one thing properly, it mis-recognizes something else all the more thoroughly.

~ Karl Barth

All people express a fondness for truth and sincerity, yet many people prefer to live with their illusions and delusions. A person’s sincere desire to believe only what is true oftentimes does not trump their ingrained resistance to truths that fail to coincide with their deeply held desires. People reject truth because it undercuts what they wish was true and despise or discredit anyone whom offers a different version of truth than they are prepared to accept.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

This is not hyperbole. It is possible for the average professor to have been taught by leftists, grown up in a left-leaning city, read only left-leaning books, entertained by leftists in pop culture and became a professor without holding a job outside academia. How can we expect these professors to adequately explain what people who oppose them believe?

~ Lee Doren

...the most important thing you must remember when dealing with a politically biased professor is to be friendly.

~ Lee Doren

Equal time is not necessary when dealing with evil. Nazis do not merit equal or fair treatment.

~ Robert Fisk

... Whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases.

~ Max Weber