Quotes About Open-mindedness

Lack of certainty is precisely what makes conclusions more reliable than the conclusions of those who are certain, because the good scientist will be ready to shift to a different point of view if better evidence or novel arguments emerge. Therefore certainty is not only something of no use but is also in fact damaging, if we value reliability.

I believe everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.

It takes wisdom to know what we don't know

I have explored and have voluntarily entered into domains forbidden by a large fraction of those in our culture who are not curious, are not explorative and are not mentally equipped to enter these domains.

Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

My final two cents worth of advice is to develop an all-consuming curiosity for things both exotic and ordinary. Read, observe, analyze, and become involved with a variety of interests. Study, practice, delve, probe, investigate, and above all, be flexible. Keep an open mind. The world is changing fast. Don't get caught in the corner of the ring. - Ward Kimball

Book-burners try to destroy ideas that differ from their own. Reading does the opposite. It encourages doubt... reading releases you from the limits of yourself.

When we expand our thinking, we expand who we are as human beings: the perspective from which we view the world, and the concepts and values we use to guide our choices.

I simply will never stop learning because I don´t want to tie myself just to one way of making a living.

Thomas Jefferson's classic formulation: 'it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

I do not recommend ignorance and I am not saying that there is no truth, but I am arguing that the best way to think about truth is to call it the best interpretation that anybody has come up with yet while conceding that no one knows what is coming next. There are lots of competing truths battling with one another for their place in the sun, and the truth is that we have to learn to cope with the conflict. The skies do not open up and drop The Truth into our laps.

It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.

If we think we have found truth for ourselves, above all things, let us not impose it on one another. Let us lock upon it all the doors of consciousness. For however inspiring it may be to us, however ennobling, when once we try to impose it on another it becomes a poison.

Those who object to what is new are controlled by the love of what is old.

Genuine ignorance is... profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish waterproof to new ideas.

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakness to admit that a belief to which we have once committed ourselves is wrong. We get so identified with an idea that it is literally a pet notion and we rise to its defense and stop our eyes and ears to anything different.

Genuine ignorance is more profitable because likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; while ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with a varnish waterproof to new ideas.

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.

The biggest idiot you will meet in life will be the person that thinks they know it all.

If you are bored with Berkeley and San Francisco, you are bored with life.

Yeah, I do. HipHop was, though I would not say all, cause I try to keep myself open to other things, but nearly all I listend to for the last 14 years of my life.

My life won't be a series of either/ors - musician or actor, rock or country, straitlaced or rebellious, this or that, yes or no. The real choices in life aren't that simple.

I think people can live a religious life and yet believe in things maybe outside the box a little bit.