50 Open-Mindedness Quotes

In a world that is constantly evolving, staying open-minded is key to personal growth and meaningful connections. Open-mindedness allows us to embrace new ideas, understand diverse perspectives, and adapt to changing circumstances with grace. It's a mindset that not only enriches our lives but also contributes to a more compassionate and inclusive society. To inspire you on this journey, we've curated a collection of the top 50 quotes on open-mindedness. These insightful words from influential thinkers, leaders, and visionaries will encourage you to keep an open heart and mind, no matter what life throws your way.

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

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

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

8. “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

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

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

11. “True love doesn't spoil.” - Toba Beta

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 patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank.” - Steven Johnson

22. “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

23. “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

24. “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

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

26. “The thing is, it's very dangerous to have a fixed idea. A person with a fixed idea will always find some way of convincing himself in the end that he is right” - Atle Selberg

27. “It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.Ignorance is our deepest secret.And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.Here is a quick test:If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.It will do both of you good.” - Vera Nazarian

28. “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

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

30. “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

31. “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

32. “A different species a different set of values a world completely unlike your own. There is a feeling you can only get when you meet the unknown and open your mind. - Nakajima (Gin no Saji)” - Hiromu Arakawa

33. “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

34. “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

35. “Vulnerability is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding, but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable: quake and shake in your boots with it. the new goodness that is coming to you, in the form of people, situations, and things can only come to you when you are vulnerable, i.e. open.” - Stephen Russell

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

37. “Flexibility requires an open mind and a welcoming of new alternatives.” - Deborah Day

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

39. “The problem with open-mindedness is that it can become empty-mindedness” - Christopher Hitchens

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

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

42. “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

43. “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

44. “Open eyes love blindly” - Holly Romero

45. “One’s opinion should only be as strong as one’s knowledge on the matter.” - Eric Hirzel

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

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

48. “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

49. “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

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