Jean Webster Quotes

When I look around the world and think why is everything working or not working, it's because it's entrenched ideology. You can't solve a problem if you're sitting down with people who say, "All these ideas are off the table because of what I believe."

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

Some people when they get older are so firm in their beliefs that you'll never move them.

Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget.

When I was younger, I could get that white-knuckle grip of holding on to an idea and not wanting to let it go.

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you're gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It's a big danger.

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

One of the failings of ideologues is their inability to see that everyone else isn't necessarily an ideologue like them.

They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.

The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

We always plan too much and always think too little. We resent a call to thinking and hate unfamiliar argument that does not tally with what we already believe or would like to believe.

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.

A narrow mind begets obstinacy; we do not easily believe what we cannot see.

A person who knows all the answers, has an opinion on everything, has a certainty backed up by rational argument, has very little possibility of further progress. Such a person is unlikely to walk away from a discussion with anything more than a reaffirmation of how right he or she has been all along.

The losers in life think they have all the answers. They can’t learn because they’re too busy telling everyone what they know.

Psychosclerosis: the hardening of the attitude which causes a person to cease dreaming, seeing, thinking, and leading.

An obstinate person does not hold opinions; they hold them.

How prone we are to come to the consideration of every question with heads and hearts pre-occupied! How prone to shrink from any opinion, however reasonable, if it be opposed to any, however unreasonable, of our own! How disposed are we to judge, in anger, those who call upon us to think, and encourage us to enquire! To question our prejudices seems nothing less than sacrilege; to break the chains of our ignorance, nothing short of impiety!

The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without.

Xylophone is spelled with an X. That's wrong. It should be a Z up front. Next time you spell xylophone, use a Z. If someone says, "That's wrong!", you say, "No, it ain't." If you think that's wrong, then you need to have your head Z-rayed.

I don't know very much but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it…My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

I don't travel in circles where people say, 'I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.' That's just a long-winded religious way to say 'Shut up.'

People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.

At length weariness succeeds to labor, and the mind lies at ease in the contemplation of her own attainments without any desire of new conquests or excursions. This is the age of recollection and narrative; the opinions are settled, and the avenues of apprehension shut against any new intelligence; the days that are to follow must pass in the inculcation of precepts already collected, and assertion of tenets already received; nothing is henceforward so odious as opposition, so insolent as doubt, or so dangerous as novelty.

An ideologue - one who thinks ideologically - can't lose. He can't lose because his answer, his interpretation and his attitude have been determined in advance of the particular experience or observation. They are derived from the ideology, and not subject to the facts.