Creativity Quote by Oscar Hammerstein II

You can practically hear the indictment in the grammar: hate and fear aren’t natural weather systems that roll in on their own. They’re lesson plans. Oscar Hammerstein II, a Broadway craftsman with a populist megaphone, turns a simple sentence into a cultural accusation: if prejudice is taught, then somebody is doing the teaching, and society is paying for the curriculum.

The line lands hardest in its original context: the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, where the song "You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught" confronted American racism head-on, not through a sermon but through melody. Hammerstein understood Broadway’s soft power. Put the argument in a tune, and audiences find themselves humming a radical idea on the way to the parking lot. That’s the trick: moral clarity smuggled in as entertainment.

Its subtext is about institutions, not just individuals. Parents, schools, churches, newspapers, laws, casting choices, even who gets framed as “normal” in romance and family narratives - all of it can function as a teacher. The phrase “taught” also spreads responsibility across time: prejudice isn’t a personal quirk, it’s a hand-me-down, rehearsed until it feels like instinct.

The cultural sting is that the quote doesn’t flatter the listener. It doesn’t blame monsters; it blames classrooms. In the postwar era, as America congratulated itself on defeating fascism abroad while tolerating segregation at home, Hammerstein’s line exposes the contradiction with Broadway-level bluntness: if hate is learned, it can be unlearned, but only if we admit where we learned it.