August 31, 2025

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), American physician, poet, novelist, The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), Seldes p.189

Is this not the very same point that Oscar Hammerstein made more popularly in the lyrics to “You’ve Got to be Taught” (“…to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, of people whose skin is a different shade…”), a song from the musical South Pacific.

Despite the progress made on so many fronts over the past century and more, I fear this may be as true today as it was the day it was written.