44 Quotes On Open-Mindedness

In a world that's rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected, open-mindedness is more crucial than ever. It allows us to embrace new ideas, understand diverse perspectives, and foster meaningful dialogue. Whether you're seeking inspiration for personal growth or looking to nurture a more inclusive mindset, the right words can offer powerful guidance. Dive into our carefully curated collection of the top 44 quotes on open-mindedness and discover insights that challenge assumptions, ignite curiosity, and open the door to endless possibilities. Let these words encourage you to see the world with fresh eyes and a receptive heart.

1. “To be evenminded is the greatest virtue.Wisdom is to speakthe truth and actin keeping with its nature.” - Heraclitus

2. “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - George Bernard Shaw

3. “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” - Charles Darwin

4. “Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

5. “[B]egin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.” - Alan Alda

6. “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.” - Frank Zappa

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

8. “It is never too late to give up your prejudices” - Henry David Thoreau

9. “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 was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” - Marcus Aurelius

10. “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” - Albert Einstein

11. “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” - George Eliot

12. “All the systems which explain so precisely why the world is as it is and why it can never be otherwise, have always called forth in me the same kind of uneasiness one has when face to face with the regulations displayed under the glaring lights of a prison cell. Even if one had been born in prison and had never seen the stars or seas or woods, one would instinctively know of timeless freedom in unlimited space.My evil star, however, had fated me to be born in times when only the sharply demarcated and precisely calculable where in fashion.... "Of course, I am on the Right, on the Left, in the Centre; I descend from the monkey; I believe only what I see; the universe is going to explode at this or that speed" - we hear such remarks after the first words we exchange, from people whom we would not have expected to introduce themselves as idiots. If one is unfortunate enough to meet them again in five years, everything is different except their authoritative and mostly brutal assuredness. Now they wear a different badge in their buttonhole; and the universe now shrinks at such a speed that your hair stands on end.” - Ernst Jünger

13. “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.” - Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

14. “They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.” - Francis Bacon

15. “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” - John Maynard Keynes

16. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” - James A. Michener

17. “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.” - Virginia Woolf

18. “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.” - G.K. Chesterton

19. “But having quills is a waste, even a double luxury when one can choose not to have quills but open hands.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

20. “I believe one of the most sacrificial acts of love adoptive parents can do is to give up their preconceptions and agendas about what their child's views "should" be and be open to hear the conflicting emotions and thoughts their child often experiences.” - Sherrie Eldridge

21. “The perception of other people and the intersubjective world is problematic only for adults. The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no awares of himself or of others as private subjectives, nor does he suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, to any sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of points of view. For him men are empty heads turned towards one single, self-evident world where everything takes place, even dreams, which are, he thinks, in his room, and even thinking, since it is not distinct from words.” - Maurice Merleau-Ponty

22. “A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that he other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them.” - David Foster Wallace

23. “Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.” - Malcolm X

24. “By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.” - Richard Dawkins

25. “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.” - Milan Kundera

26. “Beware: open-mindedness will often say, 'Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion.” - Criss Jami

27. “I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis.” - Criss Jami

28. “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.” - Hyman G. Rickover

29. “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.” - Ashly Lorenzana

30. “1. A Cup of Tea Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), recieved a university professor who came to inqure about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!" "Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your up?” - Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps

31. “Renewal requires opening yourself up to new ways of thinking and feeling” - Deborah Day

32. “The Word frees us from smallness of mind (1 Kings 4:29) and from threatening confinements (Psalm 18:19).” - John Piper

33. “Books and minds only work when they're open.” - James Dewar

34. “An open mind is not an end in itself but a means to the end of finding truth.” - Peter Kreeft

35. “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.” - Alan Alda

36. “Some people like living in black and white worlds. Let them stay there. Appreciate all the colors you see in your world though.” - Ashly Lorenzana

37. “Open eyes love blindly” - Holly Romero

38. “Create inclusion - with simple mindfulness that others might have a different reality from your own.” - Patti Digh

39. “What few rules appear to be in place are all made up.” - Patti Digh

40. “We must quit thinking we know everything, and quit placing "knowledge" over kindness and compassion.” - Bryant McGill

41. “Being generous often consists of simply extending a hand. That's hard to do if you are grasping tightly to your righteousness, your belief system, your superiority, your assumptions about others, your definition of normal.” - Patti Digh

42. “It's not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about.” - Criss Jami

43. “Foretold through memories I remember what dangers I was warned of if lived by ways of sinning. That by living a fruitful life with an open mind to love all people would bring me to a place of peaceful tranquility. I wonder if these are all lies. All of them.” - Nicholas A. McGirr

44. “An open mind is as welcoming as an open door.” - Nick Lopez