"We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them"
About this Quote
Hatred often begins as a blank space where knowledge should be. Charles Caleb Colton captures a self-sealing loop: ignorance breeds hostility, and hostility then refuses the very knowledge that could undo it. The sentence is a tight antimetabole, flipping its terms to show a trap that feeds on itself. It is not merely a description of human error but an ethical charge; the phrase will not know shifts the problem from inability to a choice of blindness.
Colton was an early 19th-century English cleric and aphorist, best known for Lacon, a book of succinct reflections on human conduct. Writing in a Britain shaped by rapid urbanization, class anxiety, and imperial encounters, he was keenly aware of how people sort themselves into comfortable circles of likeness and status. His observation targets the social mechanics of prejudice: when we do not know a person, we fill the void with stereotypes that simplify and protect our egos. Once dislike takes root, we defend it by refusing to look again, because new knowledge threatens our settled identity.
Modern life gives the line fresh edges. Polarized media, curated feeds, and niche communities make it easy to keep estranged groups faceless. Algorithms flatter what we already believe, and moral certainty hardens into refusal to engage. Social psychologists later showed that meaningful contact can reduce prejudice, but it requires a willingness to step across thresholds of suspicion. Colton points to that threshold: the moral work of attention.
There is a practical wisdom here. Curiosity is not sentimental; it is a discipline against fear. Stories, names, and concrete encounters disrupt lazy categories and return a complex person to view. Hatred thrives on distance and abstraction; knowing narrows the distance and breaks the abstraction. Colton reminds us that animosity often starts in ignorance but persists by choice, and that the first act of justice is to look long enough to see.
Colton was an early 19th-century English cleric and aphorist, best known for Lacon, a book of succinct reflections on human conduct. Writing in a Britain shaped by rapid urbanization, class anxiety, and imperial encounters, he was keenly aware of how people sort themselves into comfortable circles of likeness and status. His observation targets the social mechanics of prejudice: when we do not know a person, we fill the void with stereotypes that simplify and protect our egos. Once dislike takes root, we defend it by refusing to look again, because new knowledge threatens our settled identity.
Modern life gives the line fresh edges. Polarized media, curated feeds, and niche communities make it easy to keep estranged groups faceless. Algorithms flatter what we already believe, and moral certainty hardens into refusal to engage. Social psychologists later showed that meaningful contact can reduce prejudice, but it requires a willingness to step across thresholds of suspicion. Colton points to that threshold: the moral work of attention.
There is a practical wisdom here. Curiosity is not sentimental; it is a discipline against fear. Stories, names, and concrete encounters disrupt lazy categories and return a complex person to view. Hatred thrives on distance and abstraction; knowing narrows the distance and breaks the abstraction. Colton reminds us that animosity often starts in ignorance but persists by choice, and that the first act of justice is to look long enough to see.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
|---|---|
| Source | Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words — Charles Caleb Colton, 1820 (commonly cited aphorism in Colton's Lacon). |
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