Quotes About Openness

True spirituality breaks down the walls of our souls and lets in not just heaven, but the whole world.

People can't listen until they're ready. I sure couldn't. I was, like, deaf to everyone except the thoughts. They were the boss of me.

No, no, not at all. I'm a professional. If I can't take criticism, how will I ever grow?

No matter how nice the place is where you live, you need to experience life and the world.

People are anxious to know the real you. Take the risk to let others into your world. You have the skills and knowledge to be an excellent communicator. Don't be afraid to confidently and genuinely engage those around you.

Admitting that you do not know something is the first step to learning.

I give everyone a chance to prove themselves before I dismiss them.

No one is unreachable as long as he is teachable.

The moment Eve bit into the apple, her eyes opened and she became free. She exposed the truth of what every woman knows: to find our sovereign voice often requires a betrayal.

The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world.

But I didn't want there to be any silences, out of which raw truths might tumble

The mistake of man is that he always seeks explanations which uphold his view of the world.

A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously ... is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules prescribed to it by organized knowledge. It ... rends the veil with which society conceals them, and perceives them anew.

The decay of giving is today matched by a hardness towards receiving.

You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.

There is, in fact, no better way to produce shallow and superficial people than to let them live their lives entirely in the open, without concealment of anything.

There can be no life without change, and to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.

I particularly value conversations which are meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't, with people who are different from myself.

The universities have got a job here as well in making sure that people actually understand that we're open for university students coming into the U.K. There's a job here not just for the government, I think there's a job for the universities as well to make sure that people know that we are open.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

Is it possible to create an environment where people are welcomed and accepted…no matter what they look like? No matter what they say? No matter what they believe? Is it possible for church to be the place where the average person can walk in off the street, warts and all, and be fully embraced? Is it possible for the church to become known as the least judgmental place Americans know?

Who is so wise as to have perfect knowledge of all things? Therefore trust not too much to thine own opinion, but be ready also to hear the opinions of others.

To assume you have it all figured out is a warning signal that you aren't humble enough to listen to God and to others. If you refuse to chisel away at arrogant attitudes, trouble lies ahead. You know very little if you claim to have all the answers.

The person who truly understands love could love anyone.