Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
Interpretation
Our personal experiences shape our perceptions, and we must acknowledge our biases rather than try to ignore them.
In this quote, Edward R. Murrow emphasizes the idea that every individual is shaped by their unique experiences, which in turn creates biases and prejudices. Recognizing these biases is crucial because while we may not be able to eliminate them entirely, awareness allows us to approach situations and others with a more open mind, leading to better understanding and empathy.
In practice
During a workshop on diversity, this quote can remind participants to acknowledge their own biases.
We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.
One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles.
Speaking of Sir Winston Churchill: He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
The best speakers know enough to be scared…the only difference between the pros and the novices is that the pros have trained the butterflies to fly in formation.
As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be.
Only her tight, tight eyes were left. They were always left...They were everything. Everything was there, in them...Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.
Through prayer, charity and humility before God, people receive a heart which is firm and merciful, attentive and generous, a heart which is not closed, indifferent or prey to the globalization of indifference.
A foundation in Christ was and is always to be a protection in days "when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you." In such days as we are now in--and will more or less always be in--the storms of life "shall have no power over you... because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall." (Helaman 5:12)
Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.
There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. That one of the biggest transformations we have seen in human life in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. That we must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.
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