Quotes about Open-mindedness

Through doubt we can learn more than through naive trust

The wise do not classify. The wise do not want to be classified. Classifying people is not classy.

You may be ignorant of all the books in the world, and I hope you are, of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions. ( Essay to Leo Baeck , 1953)

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.

Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.

And, anyhow, hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?

It's only through listening that you learn, and I never want to stop learning.

Life is a classroom -- only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.

What we need to do in this PC world is forget about unanimity of speech and unanimity of thought and we need to concentrate on being respectful of those people with whom we disagree.