Quotes & Sayings About Impartiality

Remember," cried Willoughby, "from whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge
that because she was injured, she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint ... — Jane Austen

[A]s moral philosophers through the ages have pointed out, a philosophy of living based on "Not everyone, just me!" falls apart as soon as one sees oneself from an objective standpoint as a person just like others. It is like insisting that "here," the point in space one happens to be occupying at the moment, is a special place in the universe. — Steven Pinker

The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets. — James Madison

The great critic ... must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things. — W. Somerset Maugham

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance. — G.K. Chesterton

The power of the word, with which the cast away is cast away, pronounces the turning away from all moral uncertainty, from every sympathy with the abyss, the reneging of that phrase of compassion, that "to understand all is to forgive all", and what was beginning here was that "wonder of the reborn impartiality", which was briefly mentioned in one of the author's dialogues with not a little mystery. What strange coherence! — Thomas Mann

In what resides the most characteristic Virtue of humanity?
In good works?
Possibly.
In the creation of beautiful objects? Perhaps.
But some would look in a different direction, and find it in detachment. To all such David Hume must be a great saint in the calendar; for no mortal being was ever more completely divested of the trammels of the personal and the particular, none ever practiced with more consummated success the divine art of impartiality — Lytton Strachey

Having a gut instinct that told me how to be a moral person might be evolutionarily handy. On the other hand, emotional moral judgment also enables people to do really horrible things to each other, like lynching or "honor" killings, and justify them by calling them "moral." Because sociopaths don't experience morality emotionally, I would argue that we are freed to be more rational and more tolerant. There is something to be said for the impartiality of pure reason - religion-created mass hysteria among the supposedly mentally healthy populace has resulted in much worse damage and carnage in the world than anything sociopaths have caused. (Although I imagine that there may sometimes be sociopaths at the head of it all, whipping up the masses to do their bidding.) — M.E. Thomas

In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side. — Euripides

Impartiality is not neutrality. It is partiality for justice. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Five things are requisite to a good officer - ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality. — William Penn

The sea slapped ominously, confessing its strategic impartiality. The sea is an international sea, and the sky a universal sky. Often we forget that. Often we think that what is verging upon us is ours alone. We forget that there are other sides entirely. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

In carrying out a peacekeeping mission where the grand strategy is to maintain peace and order by persuading armed parties or other hostile elements to back away from aggressive activities, military strength is not a definite measure of success; neither could material contribution alone guarantees the "winning of the hearts and minds" of the people. What appears to be important is the day-to-day conduct of the peacekeepers on the ground; those who uphold the principles of neutrality and impartiality, as well as those who are able to carry all aspects of its operational duties exceptionally. — Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono

Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching a planet where - as has become clear - anything is possible ... The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize. — Stanislaw Lem

Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace. — John L. Lewis

Effective altruism is about asking "How can I make the biggest difference I can?" and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer. It takes a scientific approach to doing good. Just as science consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's true, and a committment to believe the truth whatever that turns out to be. As the phrase suggests, effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's best for the world, and a commitment to do what's best, whatever that turns out to be. — William MacAskill

But, as Bacon has well pointed out, truth is more likely to come out of error, if this is clear and definite, than out of confusion, and my experience teaches me that it is better to hold a well-understood and intelligible opinion, even if it should turn out to be wrong, than to be content with a muddle-headed mixture of conflicting views, sometimes miscalled impartiality, and often no better than no opinion at all. — William Bayliss

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber. — James Surowiecki

Responding to bereavement by trying to make a difference is certainly both understandable and admirable, but it doesn't give you good reason to raise money for one specific cause of death rather than any other. If that person had died in different circumstances it would have been no less tragic. What we care about when we lose someone close to us is that they suffered or died, not that they died from a specific cause. By all means, the sadness we feel at the loss of a loved one should be harnessed in order to make the world a better place. But we should focus that motivation on preventing death and improving lives per se, rather than preventing death and improving lives in one very specific way. Any other decision would be unfair on those we could have helped more. — William MacAskill

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality. — George Eliot

If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken. — Henry David Thoreau

I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC?s coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. — Jeremy Paxman

Journalists hold themselves apart, and above, the common person. They have rules designed to ensure their objectivity and impartiality. — Michael Arrington

As long as the appointment process is transparent and there is a broad mix of political views among the governors of the BBC, I think the public can feel confident that impartiality and independence are just as important to me as they have been to previous incumbents. — Gavyn Davies

ATHENA: There are two sides to this dispute. I've heard only one half the argument. ( ... ) So you two parties, summon your witnesses, set out your proofs, with sworn evidence to back your stories. Once I've picked the finest men in Athens, I'll return. They'll rule fairly in this case, bound by a sworn oath to act with justice. — Aeschylus

The law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges of Paris. — Anatole France

Justice is impartiality. Only strangers are impartial. — George Bernard Shaw

Such bureaucrats can neither be hurried in their deliberations nor made to see common sense. Indeed, the very absurdity or pedantry of these deliberations is for them the guarantee of their own fair-mindedness, impartiality, and disinterest. To treat all people with equal contempt and indifference is the bureaucrat's idea of equity. — Theodore Dalrymple

The worst time was 1983. Love and life and everything went wrong. I reached absolute rock bottom. I saw the Minotaur at the bottom of the abyss. I learnt of the harshness of the world and its impartiality to human failure. — Ben Okri

In a world where there were no specifically mental facts, is it not plain that there would be a complete impartiality, an evenly diffused light, not the central illumination fading away into outer darkness, which is characteristic of objects in relation to a mind? — Bertrand Russell

I wore one of my Tanguy earrings and one made by Calder in order to show my impartiality between Surrealist and Abstract Art. — Peggy Guggenheim

And if Francoise then, inspired like a poet with a flood of confused reflections upon bereavement, grief, and family memories, were to plead her inability to rebut my theories, saying: "I don't know how to espress (sic) myself" - I would triumph over her with an ironical and brutal common sense worthy of Dr. Percepied; and if she went on: "All the same she was a geological (sic) relation; there is always the respect due to your geology (sic)," I would shrug my shoulders and say: "It is really very good of me to discuss the matter with an illiterate old woman who cannot speak her own language," adopting, to deliver judgment on Francoise, the mean and narrow outlook of the pedant, whom those who are most contemptuous of him in the impartiality of their own minds are only too prone to copy when they are obliged to play a part upon the vulgar stage of life. — Marcel Proust

Impartiality of the state toward all religions. The only adequate option open to Muslims and Christians as citizens of the same state is to advocate the impartiality of the state toward all religions; no religion is preferred by the state, and all religions are impartially supported. This allows Christians and Muslims to be faithful to two fundamental impulses of monotheism simultaneously - to (1) honor the conviction that God is the God of all people and (2) obey God's command to act justly and practice neighborly love toward all people. — Miroslav Volf

It is only on the basis of undiluted Nationalism and of perfect justice and impartiality that the Indian Army of Liberation can be built up. — Subhas Chandra Bose

The most interesting acquaintanceship I have struck up here is that of Colonel Lapinski. He is without doubt the cleverest Pole
besides being an homme d'action [man of action]
that I have ever met. His sympathies are all on the German side, though in manners and speech he is also a Frenchman. He cares nothing for the struggle of nationalities and only knows the racial struggle. He hates all Orientals, among whom he numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, etc., with equal impartiality ... His aim now is to raise a German legion in London ... — Karl Marx

As such, we must oppose torturing human beings for the same reason we oppose "choice" in abortion rights, because torture dehumanizes both the tortured and the torturer. We ought to be those insisting that capital punishment, where it exists, is not discriminatory against the poor or racial minorities and that it not exist as part of a system in which innocent persons are mistakenly executed. A death penalty that exempts the white and the affluent, while putting to death those without the power to evade such justice, is hardly what God set forth in the covenant with Noah or in the sword-wielding delegated authority to Caesar to punish evildoers. And, even short of the death penalty, we should care about impartiality before the law, in the making and in the enforcement of laws for all persons, regardless of race or ethnicity or background. — Russell D. Moore

If God fairness, impartiality, equity, are his essence, that should become dominant in any society — Sunday Adelaja

Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own great merit with steady consciousness, and waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation. — Samuel Johnson

Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy. — Guglielmo Marconi

The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics. — Theodor Adorno

My father and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy
a sort of armed neutrality, so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict impartiality between us
which is to say, my father did the breaking, and I did the suffering. — Mark Twain

The law is logical and is based on common sense. The trick was to argue the law in favor of your particular point of view without sounding biased. It was kind of like a magic trick: the best illusionist being the one who can best manipulate the logic to his or her advantage, all the while giving the illusion of impartiality. — Kenneth Eade

Protestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger. — William Cobbett

Propaganda must not concern itself with what is best in man - the highest goals humanity sets for itself, its noblest and most precious feelings. Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve. It must therefore utilize the most common feelings, the most widespread ideas, the crudest patterns, and in so doing place itself on a very low level with regard to what it wants man to do and to what end. Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality. — Jacques Ellul

The U.N.'s impartiality allows it to negotiate and operate in some of the toughest places in the world. And time and again, studies have shown that U.N. peacekeeping is far more effective and done with far less money than what any government can do on its own. — Ban Ki-moon

Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris. — Isaac

A jury is always a more orthodox body than any defendant brought before it; for blacks it is usually a whiter group, for poor people, a more prosperous group ...
Another lesson about the justice system: the way the judge charges the jury inevitably pushes them one way or the other, limits their independent judgment. — Howard Zinn

The public impression is that the government, industry or the highest bidder can buy a scientist to add credibility to any message. That crucial quality of impartiality is being lost. — Johnny Ball

Those who are men in God's eyes would live and die for the promotion of equity, fairness and impartiality — Sunday Adelaja

Our work for human dignity is often lonely, and almost always an uphill climb. At times, our efforts are misunderstood, and we are mistaken for the enemy. There has been a clear erosion of respect for U.N. blue and our impartiality. — Ban Ki-moon

Discernment is a power of the understanding in which few excel. Is not that owing to its connection with impartiality and truth? for are not prejudice and partiality blind? — Sir Fulke Greville

Every discussion which is made from an egoistic standpoint is corrupted from the start and cannot yield an absolutely sure conclusion. The ego puts its own interest first and twists every argument, word, even fact to suit that interest. — Paul Brunton

Impartiality is incompatible with the will to affirm oneself or quite simply with the will to exist. To acknowledge another's merits is an alarming symptom, an act against nature. — Emil Cioran

When God speaks about equity, that choice of word, makes us understand that God is not referring to the leaders of the land or the elite this time around. He is actually talking about how ordinary citizens of the land relate to each other in fairness and impartiality. — Sunday Adelaja

(...) Taking the journalist's vow of impartiality and objectivity was not unlike joining an order of monks and spending the rest of your life in a glass monastery - removed from the world of human affairs even as it continued to whirl around you on all sides. To be a journalist meant you could never be the person who tossed the brick through the window that started the revolution. You could only watch the man toss the brick, you could try to understand why he had tossed the brick, you could explain to others what significance the brick had in starting the revolution, but you yourself could never toss the brick or even stand in the mob that was urging the man to throw it. — Paul Auster

The worst grotesque situations: believing one knows oneself, believing one knows everything about some topic, believing one has judged with absolute impartiality, believing one will love and be loved forever. In conversation, people think one thing and, in trying to communicate it, say something else. The interlocutor hears one thing, but understands something different. When answering, one does not respond to what the other person initially thought, nor to what the other person said, but to what one has understood. The final result: a conversation between deaf people who do not even know how to listen to themselves. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I see on a immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces have each and all played their part in developing and hardening man and giving him the heroic fiber. — John Burroughs

None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer. Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship. — John Muir

I think of sense, and of thoughts built on sense, as windows, not as prison bars. I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibnitz's monads; and I think it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can. But it is also his duty to recognize such distortions as are inevitable from our very nature. Of these, the most fundamental is that we view the world from the point of view of the here and now, not with that large impartiality which theists attribute to the Deity. To achieve such impartiality is impossible for us, but we can travel a certain distance towards it. To show the road to this end is the supreme duty of the philosopher. — Bertrand Russell

The hardest task for the historian ... is to consider the evidence without prejudice. We all have prior agendas and tend to find what we're looking for while ignoring anything contrary to our expectations. So history, because it is a human pursuit, is always partial and prejudiced no less than our own interior lives: both are just a sum of contingent memories. — Christopher Evans

Here we see that models, despite their reputation for impartiality, reflect goals and ideology. When I removed the possibility of eating Pop-Tarts at every meal, I was imposing my ideology on the meals model. It's something we do without a second thought. Our own values and desires influence our choices, from the data we choose to collect to the questions we ask. Models are opinions embedded in mathematics. — Cathy O'Neil

Have you ever taken a good look at the statue? Most people see the blindfold first and, well, that's an obvious reference to impartiality. It's also nonsense since everybody is partial. You can't help it. But take a look at her right hand. That's a sword. That's a kick-ass sword. That's supposed to represent swift and often brutal, even deadly punishment. But you see, only she - the system - can do that. The system, as messed up as it is, has the right to use that sword. You, my friend, do not." "Are — Harlan Coben

This is why I like Diakopoulos' approach of using technology to answer a need. He identifies four news consumers needs: 1. staying informed; 2. gaining personal identity (through, for example, reinforcing one's values); 3. integrating and interacting socially (finding the basis for conversation); and 4. being entertained. He next defines 10 key journalistic functions: 1. truth 2. independence 3. impartiality 4. public interest 5. watchdogging 6. organizing forums 7. informing 8. storytelling 9. aggregating 10. sensemaking — Jeff Jarvis

When fairness disappears from the public discuss of any nation, when partiality replaces impartiality, God begins to look — Sunday Adelaja

Love is Compassion, Endurance, Equanimity, Impartiality, Magnetic, Patient and Just (and Where Justice Is Not, Hate-Traders Profit) — Elizabeth Lucye Robillard

At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude - a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery. — Ernest Bramah

Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw. — George Eliot

Bias and impartiality is in the eye of the beholder. — Samuel Johnson

The Ladies Buddenbrook from Breite Strasse did not weep, however - it was not their custom. Their faces, a little less caustic than usual at least, expressed a gentle satisfaction at death's impartiality. — Thomas Mann

A good judge is not one who is impartial, but one who has prejudice for good. — Raheel Farooq

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality, without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human. — George Eliot

The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level. — Theodore Roosevelt

Impartiality is to accept that we are partial. — Raheel Farooq

Auditur et altera pars. (The other side shall be heard as well.) — Seneca.

Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear. — Neil Postman

The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality. — John Rawls

Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia should be commended for acknowledging that his views are so strong that - should the Pledge case reach the Supreme Court - he wouldn't be able to maintain the requisite impartiality. — Michael Newdow

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Well, in that case, your mighty eminence of unbiased objectivity and impartiality," said the Accuser sarcastically, "I ask for seven days to finish discovery, since I was surprised by the unreasonable volume of documents that deluged my council. These tablets of unending toledoth are time consuming." He was referring to the clay tablets that contained the genealogies of the heavens and the earth as well as those of Adam's descendants. The gall of this rascal amazed Enoch. He could turn everything into an accusation, even against Yahweh Elohim. The Accuser continued, "And you really have to admit that this endless list of animal names is quite tedious and would fatigue any staff, much less my own of less than two hundred Watchers." After a deliberate delay, he added, "Your magnificent majesty most high. — Brian Godawa

As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the vastest bribe he would never sell the decision of a case, because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments is caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer one, was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful reputation for impartiality. — George Orwell

I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man's past always colors his views, and that nothing else is so irritating as impartiality. — Will Durant

As the primary end of History is to record truth, impartiality, fidelity and accuracy are the fundamental qualities of an Historian. — Hugh Blair

There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees a complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost canonical status in Protestant theology. But now we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical. — Karl Barth

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations of petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An authour cannot obtrude his advice unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent. — Samuel Johnson

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of Evolution, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists. But I look with confidence to the future naturalists, who will be able to view both sides with impartiality. — Charles Darwin

It was not possible to think except with one's brain, no one could stand outside himself in order to check the functioning of his inner processes. — Stanislaw Lem

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. — Arnold Bennett

I think journalism anywhere should be based on social justice and impartiality, making contributions to society as well as taking responsibility in society. Whether you are capitalist or socialist or Marxist, journalists should have the same professional integrity.
Tan Hongkai — Judy Polumbaum

Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words "impartiality" and "objectivity" is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over. "Impartiality" and "objectivity" now mean the establishment point of view. — John Pilger

In reasoning upon moral subjects, we have great occasion for candor, in order to compare circumstances, and weigh arguments with impartiality. — Nathanael Emmons

The ACLU's record, far from showing a momentary wavering from impartiality, is replete with attemps to reform American society according to the wisdom of liberalism. The truth of the matters is that the ACLU has always been a highly politicized organization. — William Anthony Donohue

The serious and critical reader will not want a treacherous impartiality, which offers him a cup of conciliation with a well-settled poison of reactionary hate at the bottom, but a scientific conscientiousness, which for its sympathies and antipathies - open and undisguised - seeks support in an honest study of the facts, a determination of their real connections, an exposure of the causal laws of their movement. — Leon Trotsky

I would not presume to be as experienced as some of my senior and more esteemed colleagues. But there is something to be said for the impartiality of youth. New perspectives sometimes yield revelations disregarded by those of a more inveterate nature. Old dogs and new tricks, as it were. — Randy Henke

Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over ... [they] now mean the establishment point of view ... Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity. — John Pilger

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity. — G.K. Chesterton

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides. — Alphonse De Lamartine

A pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a faithful picture of nature, is a durable work, and is transmitted to the latest posterity. But a system, whether physical or metaphysical, commonly owes its success to its novelty; and is no sooner canvassed with impartiality than its weakness is discovered. — David Hume