Quotes About Open-mindedness

Except by sealing the brain off into separate airtight compartments, how is it possible to fly in airplanes, listen to the radio or take antibiotics while holding that the Earth is around 10,000 years old or that all Sagittarians are gregarious and affable?

There seem to be many people who simply wish to be told an answer, any answer, and thereby avoid the burden of keeping two mutually exclusive possibilities in their heads at the same time.

That's why they're placed in UFO magazines—because by and large the very act of buying such a magazine so categorizes the reader.

Our psychological predispositions pros or cons must not misleads us. All that matters is the evidence, and the evident is not in.

MUCH OF HUMAN HISTORY can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.

We receive as friendly that which agrees with [us], we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.

Scientists often say My position is mistaken. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

If you think a hammer is the only way to hammer / A nail, you ain't thought of the nail correctly.

A reluctance to acknowledge that there may be wisdom in youth would be foolish.

We can do nothing about those who do, those fools who think that dogma equates with truth.

The people who most often invited trouble were the willfully ignorant who didn't want to believe trouble was possible, so they dismissed the potential for it. You couldn't be ready for what you never considered or were unwilling to consider.

I like gay men who don't hate women, and I don't mind being around rich white people, because there's plenty of them in the Bay Area, and I know how to ignore Republicans.

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.

The problem with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and putting things in it.

Well, I think, said Nobby, that when you rule out the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around for on a cold night wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink.

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.

It was no use getting angry with Wullie; he lived in a Wullie-shaped world of his own. You had to think diagonally.

Ignorance is a wonderful thing—it's the state you have to be in before you can really learn anything.

Here is the woman who had seriously considered taking LSD under the supervision of a medical doctor so she could have a mind-altering experience, who had read herself straight out of Mormonism and into Eastern religious thought--but refused to replace one dogma with another.

A foolish man clings to wrong views, mocks the teaching of the righteous, and invites ruin and destruction.

For dialogue to be fruitful, we need to live deeply our own tradition and, at the same time, listen deeply to others. Through the practice of deep looking and deep listening, we become free, able to see the beauty and values in our own and others' tradition.

Because they have learned not to get caught in notions or representations, they do not speak as though they alone hold the truth, and they do not think that those in other traditions are going the wrong way.

Practical' people are as a rule nothing more than men sunk into the groove of daily routine, unable to emerge from a narrow circle of antiquated ideas.

Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path.