Quotes About Open-mindedness

Audiences want to see something interesting. It doesn't matter which genre or period it belongs to.

Pat was a serious listener. He was one of the first people who really challenged my ideas: 'Do you really believe that? Why? Don't accept everything you read. You should question it all, take what makes sense, and throw away the rest.' He was constantly asking, 'Did you ever consider this? What about that?' He changed the way I thought. (quoting Russell Baer, Army Ranger.)

Once, when a Republican congressman from Massachusetts accused Lincoln of having changed his mind, Lincoln replied, "Yes, I have; and I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

By closing our minds to the even remote possibility that a political leader with whom we nearly always disagree might have a point about a particular matter is to preemptively surrender the capacity of the mind to shape our public lives.

Don't join the book burners," he said. "Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go into your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.

I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself

we tend to automatically assume that everybody else is basically just like us.

be patient and curious instead of instantly judgemental.

If you really want to change someone's mind on a moral or political matter, you'll need to see things from that person's angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person's way—deeply and intuitively—you might even find your own mind opening in response. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.

You have to keep your mind as wide-open as your eyes, because almost nothing is what it seems.

There's none so blind as they that won't see.

There's a traditional Kenyan prayer: From the cowardice that dares not deal with new truth, from the laziness that is content with half-truth, from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, Good Lord, deliver me.

Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. Being an agnostic makes me live in a larger, a more fantastic kind of world, almost uncanny. It makes me more tolerant.

Pensar, analizar, inventar no son actos anómalos, son la normal respiración de la inteligencia. Glorificar el ocasional cumplimiento de esa función, atesorar antiguos y ajenos pensamientos, recordar con incrédulo estupor lo que el doctor universalis pensó, es confesar nuestra languidez o nuestra barbarie. Todo hombre debe ser capaz de todas las ideas y entiendo que en el porvenir lo será.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

We always plan too much and always think too little. We resent a call to thinking and hate unfamiliar argument that does not tally with what we already believe or would like to believe.

Joseph Campbell affirmed life as adventure. "To hell with it," he said, after his university adviser tried to hold him to a narrow academic curriculum. He gave up on the pursuit of a doctorate and went instead into the woods to read. He continued all his life to read books about the world: anthropology, biology, philosophy, art, history, religion. And he continued to remind others that one sure path into the world runs along the printed page.

It's better to think the best of everyone and be wrong than assume the worst and be right.

I very much dislike the intolerance and moralism of many Christians, and feel more sympathy with Honest Doubters than with them.

To my mind, college is the place to expand, to overcome prejudices, to look at things through one's own eyes. Here the boy first stands upon his own feet. Hitherto he has been in the hands of others to mould, now he must mould himself. He must cut loose from old ideas.

Knorretje zei: "Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel, Poeh" en Poeh zei: "Zo denk ik er ook over, Knor" en Knorretje zei: "Maar aan de andere kant, moet je wel bedenken" en Poeh zei: "Zo is het Knor, daar had ik even niet aan gedacht.

If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you. (Isaac Jaffe, Sports Night)

one of the great things about our country is that you get to believe or not believe in anything you want.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.