David Brin Quotes

It is nice to be around people who think differently than you. They challenge your ideas and keep you from being complacent.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

I'm a huge believer in learning anything from multiple points of view.

I think there's always merit in getting out of our ideological silos and being exposed to points of view with which we don't always agree.

We cherish right and we cherish left, but more important, we cherish when you are able to use the whole mind that you were born with.

After games, my wife gives me a lot of advice and criticism. Sometimes, I am upset. I say, 'Why do you advise me this?' But I like it, because to listen to a different point of view is always important. You can find a different position or point of view that can help you to be more creative.

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

Do not become so attached to any one belief than you cannot see past it to another possibility. Brom to Eragon

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.

Small thoughts fit easily into a closed mind, but big thoughts require an open one.

If a person is open to a new world view, it can often mean that he is not firmly rooted in the reality of the old world view; as a lunatic or alienated artist, his own neurotic traits can become magnified as they tremble with the new energy pouring in from the universal source.

Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

Minds, like parachutes, only function when they are open.

The mental flexibility of the wise man permits him to keep an open mind and enables him to readjust himself whenever it becomes necessary for a change.

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts.

The core of a scientific lifestyle is to change your mind when faced with information that disagrees with your views, avoiding intellectual inertia, yet many of us praise leaders who stubbornly stick to their views as "strong."

Every man should be capable of all ideas.

Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution.

We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.

I try to leave some space in my mind for things to surprise me or change my mind, I think that's important.

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.

Don't shut down the feedback loop with judgment, rigid beliefs, and prejudices.

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.