Rich Mullins Quotes

Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.

He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk.

I don't know much, but I like talking to people who know a lot more than I do.

He who listens is beloved of god, he who does not listen is hated by god. [It is] the heart [which] makes of its owner a listener or a non-listener….The fool who does not listen can accomplish nothing at all.

A certain degree of intellectual humility is a good thing.

At the end of the day, none of us are the Oracle of Delphi, so we don't get everything right. It's always good to be able to listen and to take on what seems to be the right thing to do.

Learn how to humble yourself, and be able to take advice and not feel like you know everything.

I speak from experience, and I speak from the heart, and I speak only what I know and what I understand; and on what I don't know and what I don't understand, I'm a good listener.

I know to shut up when I don't know what I'm talking about.

I learned that I'm not young enough to think I know everything. Honestly. I think you hit a certain point in life where you expect that you have so much to learn, and you may think that you've arrived, but you have kind of just begun.

If you think you know it all, you are missing something.

I felt as if I learned a few things. I learned that it's sometimes okay to think like a weenie, so long as you don't act like one—at least not all the time. I learned that it's okay to be wrong, as long as you can admit it and are willing to listen to those who may know better.

Smart is knowing if you're dumb. Knowing when to shut up and to listen to people that are smarter than you.

I think the willingness to listen is really a matter of confidence. You can't be so superconfident in your abilities that you ignore what others say, and you can't be so diffident in your abilities that you think that if they say something, you will be so taken in that you will do the wrong thing. When you are confident about your abilities and also fully aware of what you don't know you are willing to listen to outside experts with the full sense that if you don't find it worthwhile you will ignore it.

Watch, listen and learn. You can't know it all yourself. Anyone who thinks they do is destined for mediocrity.

I tell you what I love - and I think you get better as you get older - when you're younger and you don't know what you don't know, you tend to talk more about what you think you know. You shut out the opportunity to learn what you don't know.

Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person.

A man can learn a lot if he listens, and if I didn't learn anything else I was learning how much I didn't know.

Who is so wise as to have a perfect knowledge of all things? Therefore trust not too much to thine own opinion, but be ready also to hear the opinion of others. Thought thine own opinion be good, yet if for the love of God thou foregoest it, and followest that of another, thou shalt the more profit thereby.

He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows.

As you get older and you realize you really don't know as much as you think you know, you listen more. Because then you think, now I need to be more receptive to the things I don't know. That's how you learn.

The fool who thinks he is wise is just a fool. The fool who knows he is a fool is wise indeed.

True wisdom is a thing very extraordinary. Happy are they that have it: and next to them, not those many that think they have it, but those few that are sensible of their own defects and imperfections, and know that they have it not.

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.