Best Open Mindedness Quotes

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

It’s okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That doesn’t give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because you don’t like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond what is comfortable.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

One of those disturbing tendencies in academic life is that there is a desire on the part of many in the name of open-mindedness to fall into a kind of relativistic denialism in which all positions are equally legitimate, all positions must be respected, and compromise must be entered into no matter what the starting point or reasonableness of the two parties.

In my view, it’s irreverence, foolish confidence and naivety combined with persistence, open mindedness and a continual ability to learn that created Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, Juniper, AOL, Sun Microsystems and others.

I’m for open-mindedness and tolerance. I’m against any form of fanaticism, fundamentalism or zealotry, and this certainty of ‘We have the truth.’ The truth is far too large and complex. Nobody has the truth.

Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success.

I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences… This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.

It is increasingly important to be open-minded.

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent.

A politician is not as narrow-minded as he forces himself to be.

You mustn’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

If the individual is to be happy in the contemporary order, he must be open-minded with respect to new values and new arrangements.

I had the good fortune to begin my legal career as a law clerk for a judge who really epitomized open-mindedness and fairness. He read the record in detail in every single case that came before me; he insisted on scrupulously following precedents.

The most important quality for a judge is open- mindedness to the arguments.

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it.

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.

We still have a lot of work to do in American culture. More open-mindedness is happening – in some cases rapidly, in some, slowly.

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.

I’d always thought of myself as an open-minded person. I had no patience with anyone who put down other kids because of their race, religion, or sexuality. But that’s just one kind of open-mindedness. There’s another kind, too, the kind that’s willing to see people for who they really are and admit when you were wrong about them. That’s the part I still need to work on.

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

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.

One of the many lessons I hope I’ve learned is how much I underestimated people, their open-mindedness and their willingness to understand. I think, moreover, I underestimated the degree to which everyone has a story. So my advice, for whatever it’s worth, is to trust readers, trust the truth and trust the power of storytelling.

Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.

In a narrow circle the mind grows narrow. The more one expands, the larger their aims.

You can have such an open mind that it is too porous to hold a conviction.

Open-mindedness is considered to be a virtue. But, strictly speaking, it cannot occur. A new experience must be redacted into old categories. We cannot handle each event freshly in its own right. If we did so, of what use would past experience be?

Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out.

Let yourself be open and life will be easier.

Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.

The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.