Quotes About Open-mindedness

Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness.

No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Want creativity? Diversify your experience to develop your creative muscles.

An innovative mind is never once bitten, twice shy.

I've hung on for a long time in this business and had some success, and I think it's keeping an open mind and being curious and having a sense of humor about oneself that's important.

Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk. Let them finish. Do not resist, defend or debate. This only raises barriers. Try to build bridges of understanding.

We need to be agnostics first and then there is some chance at arriving at a sensible system of belief.

Sometimes people's spiritual ideas become fixed and they use them against those who don't share their beliefs - in effect, becoming fundamentalist. It's very dangerous - the finger of righteous indignation pointing at someone who is identified as bad or wrong.

Not an unbeliever, sir, a free-thinker. Perhaps you've never thought about the difference. As a free-thinker I can believe what I like, when I like. I can commit you, in your sad situation, to the protection of God this evening, even though tomorrow morning I shan't believe he exists. As an unbeliever I should be obliged not to believe, and that's an unwarrantable restriction on my thoughts.

People do not reconsider," Langer observes, "what they mindlessly accepted as true."14

Advocacy without inquiry begets more advocacy.

The prejudiced person can't see how his prejudice shapes what he "sees" and how he acts. In some sense, if he did, he would no longer be prejudiced. To operate, the "thought" of prejudice must remain hidden to its holder.

As I build new teams in the future, I will not pursue uniformity in thought process, giftedness, race, or specific religious denomination. In fact, I will pursue diversity in these areas with a vengeance. But I will make sure that each person walking in the door of any organization I lead is a huge fan of our core goals and values. It will make all the difference in the world.

I don't judge, not even myself.

You're an unusual person, she said. Bill didn't like you, but he never likes anything different. He's so—so prosaic. Don't you think that when a person gets older he should become—broadened in his outlook?

People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.

Keep away from the literal-minded folk, and ignore the scoffers.

by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious…

The wonder was in her, and the skepticism was in the world, and the coolness was in both.

A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that the other camps 9 are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them.

The banning of books is the greatest statement of both intolerance and stupidity. A country which does this is just giving a lobotomy to itself.

Mom is old-fashioned about babies. Maybe it's because she was born male, but changed so she could experience her own pregnancy with Jamie, and then with me. I asked her why she never changed back and she said she was having more fun this way, she said I should make up my own mind…

In real life there is not, as there is in every jigsaw puzzle, one picture and one picture only, into which all the pieces will eventually fit," he wrote. "It is the totalitarian mind which thinks that there is one and only one picture.