33 Quotes Tagged: open-mindedness

The problem with open-mindedness is that it can become empty-mindedness

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

A mind that listens with complete attention will never look for a result because it is constantly unfolding; like a river, it is always in movement. Such a mind is totally unconscious of its own activity, in the sense that there is no perpetuation of a self, of a “me,” which is seeking to achieve an end.

Entrepreneurial business favors the open mind.

The beliefs which we have the most warrant for have no safeguard, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

We put terrible pressure on our minds. When we tighten them or harden our views or beliefs, we lose all the softness and flexibility that makes for real shelter, belonging, and protection.

Nine times out of ten a man’s broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This is not particularly paradoxical; it is, when we come to think of it, quite inevitable. His vision of his own village may really be full of varieties; and even his vision of his own nation may have a rough resemblance to the reality. But his vision of the world is probably smaller than the world…hence he is never so inadequate as when he is universal; he is never so limited as when he generalizes. This is the fallacy in the many modern attempts at a creedless creed, at something variously described as...undenominational religion or a world faith to embrace all the faiths in the world...When a philosophy embraces everything it generally squeezes everything, and squeezes it out of shape; when it digests it necessarily assimilates.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.

People who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves form learning from their mistakes. They lack the ability to take on new perspectives and empathize with others. They close themselves off to new and important information. It's far more helpful to assume that you're ignorant and don't know a whole lot. This keeps you unattached to superstitious or poorly informed beliefs and promotes a constant state of learning and growth.

Sit down before fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you learn nothing. Don’t push out figures when facts are going in the opposite direction.

It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I've decided, is only a slow sewing shut.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

Now that you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to understand.