Quotes about Open-mindedness

Impressions form images that become fixed ideas that give birth to prejudices. Anthony De Mello said, "If you are prejudiced, you will see that person from the eye of that prejudice. In other words, you will cease to see this person as a person. The Pharisee within spends most of his time reacting to labels, his own and others".

If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own.

Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door to God's house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every person claim his or her own way to God.

detach ourselves from making our individual experience the criterion for our approach to others

He who thinks that he is finished, is finished. How true. Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.

To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Cultivate Curiosity. If you really want to grow in your lifetime, learn to be as inquisitive as a child. Curious people are never bored, and for them life becomes an unending study of joy.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

As a people, I am afraid, we tend too often to brush aside with impatience, sometimes with discourtesy, customs and points of view which are alien to us.

The danger lies in the possibility that we will not accept the person as he is but try to make him over according to our own ideas.