Quotes About Open-mindedness

LEAVING OPTIONS OPEN

It's understandable that we would believe many things as children that our parents and others in our society have passed on to us as if they were absolute truths, even though they may be nothing but traditional prejudices. But why do we cling to what Mencken called the "palpably false" after we're old enough to think for ourselves?

You want to retain the elasticity of spirit you had as a child, interested in everything, while retaining the hard-nosed need to verify and scrutinize for yourself all ideas and beliefs.

The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.

Learning an alien culture from so deeply inside it, he could no longer accept the superiority of one particular belief or value system. To

Never discriminate as to whom you study and whom you trust. Never trust anyone completely and study everyone, including friends and loved ones.

Know How Little You Know

Daily Law: When it comes to the ideas and opinions you hold, see them as toys or building blocks that you are playing with. Some you will keep, others you will knock down, but your spirit remains flexible and playful. The Laws of Human Nature, 7: Soften People's Resistance by Confirming Their Self-Opinion—The Law of Defensiveness

People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: A people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water. —James Baldwin

This is because creative people are actually looking at what is hidden in plain sight, and not rushing to generalize and label. Whether such powers are natural or learned does not matter: the mind can be trained to loosen itself up and move outside the grooves.

You do not hold on to past ways of doing things, because that will ensure you will fall behind and suffer for it. You are flexible and always looking to adapt.

People do not advertise their rigidity. You will only trip up against it if you try to introduce a new idea or procedure. Some in the group—the hyper-rigid—will become irritable, even panicky at the thought of any kind of change. If you press your case with logic and reason, you will tend to make them even more defensive and resistant.

The world is dying for bolder ideas, for people who are not afraid to speculate and investigate. Creeping conservatism will narrow your searches, tether you to comfortable ideas, and create a downward spiral—as the creative spark leaves you, you will find yourself clutching even more forcefully to dead ideas, past successes, and the need to maintain your status. Make creativity rather than comfort your goal and you will ensure far more success for the future.

Ideas as things to play with; if you hold onto them for too long, they become something dead...connecting to the world is more important than holding onto your ego

My policy is to have no policy. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809–1865

See yourself as an explorer.

The vulgar always assumed it was best to try to know everything; in his experience it was often better to know as little as possible.

The University of Michigan's Karl Weick advises, "Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.

Support a few crackpots, heretics, and dreamers, especially if they are wildly optimistic about their ideas.

Only a fool takes offense at customs different from her own.

Who'd have thought an Aiel could bloody read?

Always consider the possibility your assumptions are wrong

Bridgewater's Ray Dalio, for example, places a high premium on what he calls "radical open-mindedness," by which he means something qualitatively beyond a mere willingness to listen to a competing view when and if it comes to call. "To be radically open-minded," he says, "you need to be so open to the possibility that you might be making a mistake and/or that you have a weakness that you encourage others to tell you so.

How you make people more efficient and productive, more effective, more responsive, more open-minded, better at their jobs, is little affected by the placement of their organization on the chart. There is one exception to this general proposition: getting rid of boxes on the chart—reducing layering—is almost always a good thing.