I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive JamesRead
Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like - Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything - but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there
Interpretation
What this quote means
Prejudices can cloud our perception of reality and prevent us from embracing new experiences.
Clive James's quote emphasizes that preconceived notions and biases about a place or experience are often unfounded. Regardless of the negative labels we might attach to something, the truth is that we often engage with those experiences momentarily before fully understanding them, which highlights the importance of keeping an open mind and avoiding judgment.
Themes
PrejudicePerceptionOpen MindExperienceJudgment
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about travel, this quote could be used to remind friends to embrace the unknown instead of judging a location based on hearsay.
More from Clive James
All quotes →Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
Clive JamesRead
Murray sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.
Clive JamesRead
Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
Clive JamesRead
I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.
Clive JamesRead
The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations.
Clive JamesRead
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