W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.

In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.

The first complete sentence out of my mouth was probably that line about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.

Only idiots refuse to change their minds.

It is from a weakness and smallness of mind that men are opinionated; and we are very loath to believe what we are not able to comprehend.

I don't mind being wrong, and I don't mind changing my mind.

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

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

If you never change your mind, why have one?

I'm definitely open to change, but at the same time I am quite stubborn.

Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.

Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.

We need the self-confidence to admit that at best we possess only a partial understanding of the truth, which can be enlarged by refining our views in light of new arguments, new circumstances and new insights. But this requires us to listen to others, to weigh their arguments with care, and maybe even to learn from them.

While I was still a boy, I came to the conclusion that there were three grades of thinking; and since I was later to claim thinking as my hobby, I came to an even stranger conclusion - namely, that I myself could not think at all.

Students often say things that they will one day change their minds about, but also things that change our minds when we think about them.

For me, my greatest weakness is also my greatest strength: I'm a complete overthinker about everything.

When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.

Stafford Cripps has a brilliant mind, until he makes it up.

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!

A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness

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.

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

There is no man so blind as one who has made up his mind.

We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.