Edward Tufte Quotes

I always try to have an open mind, but there is a difference between having an open mind and having a hole in the head.

I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

There are only two things one has to bear in mind. One has to be credulous - able to believe - and skeptical - able to not believe, because if you are not skeptical, you will believe rubbish. If you are not credulous you will learn nothing and the only way to balance those two is to recognize the mystery of things.

I like to consider my mind an open door. It's just not a revolving door.

Critics reach that age when it is as valuable and daring to hold a negative opinion as it is for a positive. We learn and understand from both.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show the darkness but to put out our own eyes.

The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on.

One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind, and when not to.

As my father [Javāharlāl Nehrū] said, you have to keep an open mind, but you have to pour something into it - otherwise ideas slip away like sand between your fingers.

Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.

Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.

A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.

Openness of mind strengthens the truth in us and removes the dross from it, if there is any.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

Do not mistake for wisdom that opinion which may rise from a sick mind.

People ask me a question, I'll give them my opinion. I never claimed to have all the answers.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

If something is wrong, it'll prove to be wrong in the wash, and if it's right, you don't want to not expose yourself to it - so I read everything, no matter how horrible it gets. You listen and take it in and if it doesn't sway you, you'll know you considered it.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

That which the Fascists hate above all else, is intelligence.

Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in the broad, intelligent, and spacious way.