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.
The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.
Unlike many deities of the ancient Near East, the God of Israel shared his power with no female divinity, nor was he the divine husband or lover of any.
The sudden hand of Death close up mine eye!
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
Humanity is not perfect in any fashion; no more in the case of evil than in that of good. The criminal has his virtues, just as the honest man has his weaknesses.
Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?
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