Quotes About Openness

There's a whole stereotype of the jazz musician that's into poetry and reading and metaphysics and all that stuff. Really, it's a sign of someone who's searching, whose mind is open, looking for answers. Whatever ideas you may come up with, the beautiful thing is the search.

A book that is shut is but a block.

A couple you do not recognize - visitors, strangers - come to the door. How are you to view these people and what is your responsibility towards them? ... To assume that these visitors are really like you, that there are no real difference between you and them, and that the highest goal possible is that you and the other members of your congregation will become intimate friends with them and invite them into the private spaces of your life.

Throughout its history, the church has discovered that when it goes to the Scripture in openness and trust, it finds itself uniquely addressed there by God and its identity as the people of God shaped by that encounter.

A traveler enters the world into which he travels, but a tourist brings his own world with him and never sees the one he's in.

If we conceive of free speech as promoting the search for truth—as the metaphor of "the marketplace of ideas" suggests—we should be troubled whether that search is hindered by public officials or private citizens. The same is true of democratic justifications for free speech. If the point of free speech is to facilitate the open debate that is essential for self-rule, any measure that impairs that debate should give us pause, regardless of its source.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity

Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you shall learn nothing.

There is a story that one of the Seven Sages, a man named Liu Ling (ca. 221-330), habitually received guests while completely naked. His response to adverse comment was to declare, "I take the whole universe as my house and my own room as my clothing. Why, then, do you enter here into my trousers."14

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

Where do you begin telling someone their world is not the only one? —Lee Maracle, Ravensong

The door is on the latch tonight, The hearth-fire is aglow, I seem to hear soft passing feet- The Christchild in the snow. My heart is open wide tonight For strangers, kith or kin; I would not bar a single door Where love might enter in. Author unknown

We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.

To be educated, a person doesn't have to know much or be informed, but he or she does have to have been exposed vulnerably to the transformative events of an engaged human life.

A government or an administration, who means and acts honestly, has nothing to fear, and consequently has nothing to conceal;

An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I have a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.

The voice of wisdom is silent, except to the open mind.

You can't determine for yourself the way things should be. Things change by their very nature. How can you tie down any idea? You can see that you can't.

But inexplicable things happened to him, and Shane accepted life's oddities. He didn't know if this made him an adventurer or an idiot, but one thing was true—nothing interesting ever came from a clear path of rationality.

I like to say I don't believe in mystics . I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in destiny or kismet. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in anything. But I believe in the possibility of everything .

Innovation requires, above all else, a willingness to embrace chaos.

I have no problems doing a song or a cameo. You never know what can bring success - just like the role I did in Buddhivanta.'

There's no reason to hide anything; there's just timeliness of age and what's appropriate.