Daily Inspiration Quote by William Hazlitt

Hazlitt’s line is a barbed little confession: the mind that prides itself on independence still stumbles around in the dark without the very shortcuts it loves to condemn. “Prejudice” and “custom” sound like villains in Enlightenment moral algebra, the stuff rational people are supposed to outgrow. Hazlitt flips them into furniture. They’re not just social sins; they’re the cues that let you move at all.

The joke works because it compresses a whole theory of cognition into a domestic image. Crossing a room is the easiest possible task, almost beneath notice. By claiming he needs prejudice to do it, Hazlitt points at something uncomfortable: most of what we call “judgment” is habituated navigation. We don’t reason our way through every handshake, every tone, every micro-decision. We inherit templates - some benign, some cruel - and run them automatically. The line lands as irony, but it’s also a warning: if you pretend you’re above these defaults, you’re the most captive to them.

Context matters. Writing in the early 19th century, Hazlitt is watching a culture that talks like Reason has won, while class hierarchies, gender roles, and nationalism keep operating as if nothing happened. His critic’s eye catches the hypocrisy: “custom” is how society smuggles power into everyday life, and “prejudice” is how it turns that power into instinct.

The subtext isn’t an endorsement; it’s a diagnostic. You can’t simply abolish bias by declaring yourself enlightened. You have to notice the room you’re already walking through.