"Our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded"
About this Quote
Prejudice gets the romance; reason gets the ring. Stanhope, the worldly 18th-century statesman better known as Lord Chesterfield, isn’t politely praising rationality so much as demoting it to domestic bureaucracy. The line works because it borrows the era’s most loaded social arrangement - marriage shadowed by sanctioned male hypocrisy - and turns it into a theory of the mind. Reason is “wife”: legitimate, presentable, consulted for appearances. Prejudice is “mistress”: illicit, thrilling, privately obeyed. That snap of cynicism is the point. He’s not shocked that people are irrational; he’s diagnosing how they stay respectable while being irrational.
The intent is corrective and tactical. Chesterfield wrote as someone training a young man for public life, where persuasion matters more than philosophical consistency. In that context, the quote reads like advice: don’t expect arguments to defeat bias; expect bias to domesticate arguments. “Very often heard indeed” nods to the rituals of consultation - the committee meeting, the polite debate, the moral lecture. “Seldom minded” names the outcome we’d now call motivated reasoning: we invite reason to speak so we can ignore it with a clean conscience.
The subtext is darker: prejudice isn’t merely stubborn ignorance, it’s an attachment, even a pleasure. Calling it a mistress implies secrecy, loyalty, and the kind of self-betrayal people will rationalize to protect what they want. As a statesman in a period of party faction, patronage, and class certainty, Chesterfield is sketching an emotional map of politics: publics and elites alike don’t just hold opinions; they keep them. Reason can argue, but prejudice knows where we live.
The intent is corrective and tactical. Chesterfield wrote as someone training a young man for public life, where persuasion matters more than philosophical consistency. In that context, the quote reads like advice: don’t expect arguments to defeat bias; expect bias to domesticate arguments. “Very often heard indeed” nods to the rituals of consultation - the committee meeting, the polite debate, the moral lecture. “Seldom minded” names the outcome we’d now call motivated reasoning: we invite reason to speak so we can ignore it with a clean conscience.
The subtext is darker: prejudice isn’t merely stubborn ignorance, it’s an attachment, even a pleasure. Calling it a mistress implies secrecy, loyalty, and the kind of self-betrayal people will rationalize to protect what they want. As a statesman in a period of party faction, patronage, and class certainty, Chesterfield is sketching an emotional map of politics: publics and elites alike don’t just hold opinions; they keep them. Reason can argue, but prejudice knows where we live.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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