Frans Timmermans Quotes

I also held that view for about 50 years, but lately I have been rethinking it and now believe I was wrong.

When we have 'second thoughts' about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

Let nothing prevent you from changing your previous decision if after consideration you feel that the previous decision was incorrect.

I just wanted to stop and try to get some perspective. [ A Period of Transition] it was just a matter of wanting to review the whole thing...to try and get some relationship to what I was doing.

I don't know if I would do this if I had to start over again.

No doubt one can, in light of further study and life experience, come to repudiate past convictions.

I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.

Only stupid people don't change their minds.

I think, hey, everybody has a right to change their mind.

I think it's important for people like me to evaluate and reevaluate.

I'm trying to educate people about things that I believe are right, and some of the things that I believe are right might not be right, so I live in constant self-doubt. I think that creates a kind of search that you have to have, and it prevents you from doing a lot of stuff that you would normally do.

The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.

I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching.

When you reflect, you are able to put an experience into perspective... reflective thinking enables you to distance yourself from the intense emotions of particularly good or bad experiences and see them with fresh eyes.

Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.

I know that's a little jarring, coming from a Weatherman, but what I mean by being humble is doubting if your action did anything. So you have to open your eyes, act and doubt. And then you have to repeat for a lifetime.

I have gone through the process of re-evaluating, giving a personal re-evaluation to everything that I ever believed and that I did believe while I was a, a member and a minister.

I think of how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better, that's part of what makes us Americans. It's part of what sets us apart from other nations, the United States is the most professional, most capable, most cutting-edge intelligence community in the world.

Sometimes I have that kind of critical mind to myself as well. This is because there are times where I have to do things that I don't wish to.

The only advice I can give you is what you're telling yourself. Only, maybe you're too scared to listen.

Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it.

I like to sit on things and digest them and then I'll figure out my next move, but I never said I was right for doing anything.