Andrew Sullivan Quotes

I reserve the right to think many different things and to change my mind and to even be wrong.

That's your responsibility as a person, as a human being - to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.

Not to unlearn what you have learned is the most necessary kind of learning.

I prefer to listen to people who change their mind now and then.

Intelligence is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn, and courage in readjustment.

You have to listen a lot, and you have to be open and ready to adjust to anything. It kind of provides a framework that you use all the time. You never really shut off that part of your brain when you're doing something. It's invaluable to have.

As you get older, you get stuck in your ways; just as you become stiffer physically, you also become stiffer mentally and more narrow-minded unless you make a conscious effort to keep yourself flexible.

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

If you never change your mind, why have one?

Only idiots refuse to change their minds.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

You are always learning; there is a lot of grey; don't take things for granted.

As children know, there's lots of fun in nonsense. We never stop benefiting from staying flexible, open and responsive, even in the midst of confusion.

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions.

The importance of all education lies far more in the training of minds than in any facts which may be absorbed, for trained minds will ascertain the facts as they need to know them. Having learned to reason and to weigh the information they discover, people with such minds will be more nearly educated than any amount of cramming of definite facts into their heads will make them.

It takes intellectual stamina to stay open, as a leader and a mind, to absorb information and adversity.

A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached.

People's minds can change very quickly.

I think the open mind is the one that's reachable.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

Every minute of every day, we should be challenging ourselves to grow intellectually and to stay curious about the world.