Life & Wisdom Quote by Matthew Green

Blinkers are for horses, not for citizens, and Matthew Green’s jab lands because it treats narrow-mindedness as something worn, not something inherent. “Nor bigots who but one way see” frames bigotry as a failure of vision before it’s a failure of morals: the bigot isn’t simply hateful; he’s perceptually trapped, unable or unwilling to look sideways. That choice matters. It implies bigotry is sustained by habit and self-protection, not just passion.

The sharper cut comes in the second half: “through blinkers of authority.” Green doesn’t blame ignorance alone; he blames the comforting machinery that lends ignorance a uniform. Authority here isn’t wisdom or expertise, but the institutional permission slip that turns prejudice into “common sense.” The bigot is not a rebel; he’s obedient. He sees “one way” because someone told him that’s the safe direction to face.

Contextually, Green is writing in a period when English public life was saturated with religious and political faction, with conformity enforced as much by social pressure as by law. His line belongs to an early Enlightenment temperament: suspicious of inherited certainties, impatient with zeal, and alert to how power flatters itself by narrowing the range of acceptable thought.

The subtext is uncomfortably current. Bigotry isn’t portrayed as a personal quirk; it’s a collaboration between the believer and the badge. Green’s intent is to shame that collaboration, and to reframe open-mindedness not as politeness, but as intellectual independence.