Aging & Wisdom Quote by Nicolas Malebranche

Prejudice, Malebranche implies, is less like a belief you hold than a garment that holds you. The old coat image does two things at once: it admits that prejudices can be shabby and outgrown, and it insists they remain stubbornly wearable because they’re comfortable, habitual, and largely invisible to the person wearing them. You don’t wake up each morning and choose your coat for moral reasons; you reach for it because it’s there. That’s the subtext: prejudice isn’t primarily an intellectual error corrected by better arguments. It’s a practiced reflex, stitched into routine and self-conception.

As a 17th-century rationalist and Catholic thinker, Malebranche is writing in an era obsessed with method: Descartes’ doubt, the rise of scientific reasoning, the ambition to sort true ideas from inherited ones. His line quietly undercuts the fantasy that reason alone can disinfect the mind. The “no longer thought of” clause matters most. The danger isn’t just that we have prejudices; it’s that we stop noticing them, the way fabric becomes background noise on the body. In that sense, prejudice is closer to infrastructure than opinion: it shapes perception before perception becomes something you can debate.

The intent is corrective, almost pastoral. Malebranche warns readers that getting rid of bias requires more than critique; it requires attention, discomfort, even a willingness to feel exposed. You can’t discard what you don’t recognize as yours.