"I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so"
About this Quote
Smith’s joke lands with the tidy cruelty of a man who knows how piety can curdle into certainty. “I never read a book before previewing it” pretends to be a principle of open-mindedness while quietly advertising its opposite: the speaker wants the comfort of a verdict without the inconvenience of being changed. The punchline - “it prejudices a man so” - flips the moral panic of his day. Reading is supposed to civilize; Smith treats it as contamination, a biasing agent that ruins the pristine neutrality of someone who has not yet bothered to know anything.
The intent is satirical self-portraiture. Smith, a cleric with a public-platform conscience, is mocking the genteel habit of forming opinions on hearsay, summaries, party reputation, or doctrinal suspicion. “Previewing” is doing a lot of work: it gestures at skimming, at outsourcing judgment, at sampling just enough to keep one’s identity intact. You can hear the drawing-room voice behind it - a cultivated shrug masquerading as rigor.
Context matters: early 19th-century Britain is thick with pamphlet wars, religious controversy, and a rapidly expanding print culture that made ideas feel both dangerously portable and socially unavoidable. Smith’s line deflates the fear that books “corrupt” by suggesting the real corruption is intellectual laziness dressed as prudence. The subtext is a warning: beware the man who prides himself on being unprejudiced, because he may simply be unbothered.
The intent is satirical self-portraiture. Smith, a cleric with a public-platform conscience, is mocking the genteel habit of forming opinions on hearsay, summaries, party reputation, or doctrinal suspicion. “Previewing” is doing a lot of work: it gestures at skimming, at outsourcing judgment, at sampling just enough to keep one’s identity intact. You can hear the drawing-room voice behind it - a cultivated shrug masquerading as rigor.
Context matters: early 19th-century Britain is thick with pamphlet wars, religious controversy, and a rapidly expanding print culture that made ideas feel both dangerously portable and socially unavoidable. Smith’s line deflates the fear that books “corrupt” by suggesting the real corruption is intellectual laziness dressed as prudence. The subtext is a warning: beware the man who prides himself on being unprejudiced, because he may simply be unbothered.
Quote Details
| Topic | Book |
|---|---|
| Source | Attributed to Sydney Smith; listed on Wikiquote (Sydney Smith) as "I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so". |
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