Joseph de Maistre Quotes

Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.

Anyone who makes up their mind about an issue before they hear the issue is a fool.

To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show the darkness but to put out our own eyes.

When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.

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!

Some people have facts; these can be proven. Some people have theories; these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it.

A lot of people judge others too quickly without actually knowing the full facts or the actual real person.

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

The forming of general maxims from particular observation is a very nice operation; and nothing is more usual, from haste or a narrowness of mind, which sees not on all sides, than to commit mistakes in this particular.

I never listen to debates. They are dreadful things indeed. The plain truth is that I am not a fair man, and don't want to hear both sides. On all known subjects, ranging from aviation to xylophone-playing, I have fixed and invariable ideas. They have not changed since I was four or five.

Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having nothing but sensations.

A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.

Those who lack all idea that it is possible to be wrong can learn nothing except know-how.

He that is possessed with a prejudice is possessed with a devil, and one of the worst kinds of devils, for it shuts out the truth, and often leads to ruinous error.

I like groaning. That means that you're not pandering to their already settled prejudices.

The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

Logic: an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice.

All scientists know of colleagues whose minds are so well equipped with the means of refutation that no new idea has the temerity to seek admittance. Their contribution to science is accordingly very small.

It is important not to give the appearance of a predisposed mind. And it is more important not to let the mind become predisposed.

Bigots see something they expect and then they stop thinking about what is in front of them. It's probably how they got to be bigots in the first place.

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it:; once you can honestly say, "I don't know", then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

The human mind can hardly remain entirely free from bias, and decisive opinions are often formed before a thorough examination of a subject from all its aspects has been made.

A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced.