“How can I overcome prejudices against such and such sects or races?” Just repeat over and over to yourself that all prejudice is stupid and ignorant. By and by you will, by auto-suggestion, get it into your subconsciousness that prejudice shall have no place in you.
Prejudice means “judging before” you have the facts. Never judge till after you have the facts.
Nothing is so utterly devoid of reason as a passionate hatred of any race or class. All men are much the same when you come to know them. Class or race faults are superficial. The human qualities strike deep.
PERSONAL INFLUENCE
Of all the forces that drive human beings, the greatest is personal influence.
By personal influence I mean that force that goes out from you, simply by virtue of what you are. It has nothing to do with what you do or say or try, except as these things express what you are.
Every person sends out what we might call dynamic rays or invisible electric-like impulses which are of such nature as to affect other persons. These rays from me can make other individuals gay or sad, good or bad, and so forth.
This is the only power that pulls souls, the only wind that bends them, the only fire that warms them, the only stream that bears them along.
Emerson said that “what you are preaches so loudly that I cannot hear what you say”; which is a striking way of stating that one’s unconscious influence far outreaches in effect one’s conscious effort.
It would be well if we would keep this in mind; it would save us a lot of futile busying.