Gene Wolfe Quotes

You have to keep your mind as wide-open as your eyes, because almost nothing is what it seems.

It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.

When the facts change, I change my mind.

The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

The eyes see not what is before them when the mind is intent on other matters.

The inexplicable happens all the time. It makes more sense to simply accept things we observe but cannot understand. It is really more scientific to keep an open mind. Until we can understand and explain the things we now label miracles, let us accept them and try to create more of them.

A lot of people are lazy when it comes to making up their own mind about something, you know? If you're labelled one way then they think thats how you are. It takes too much time to really look into things.

You must look at facts, because they look at you.

There are many people out there who don't even think of themselves as being averse to facts, but the truth is, they are not getting it.

The human mind is generally far more eager to praise and dispraise than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value; hence those fatal critics who can never point out the differing quality of two poets without putting them in an order of preference as if they were candidates for a prize.

When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.

My mind is just as open as it ever was, professor. But it's a scientific mind, and there's no place in it for superstitions.

Reflective thinking is like the crock pot of the mind. It encourages your thoughts to simmer until they're done.

You can be dogmatic, like Donald Trump, and say don't tell me any of the facts, I have made up my mind, I don't want to hear anything, or you can say, look, trade can be good or it can be bad, depending on the rules.

Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education].

An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's more available to you.

The need for certainty is the greatest disease the Mind faces

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

Small minds cannot grasp great subjects.

Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs.

...even professors of economics, to say nothing of the public, do not generally have scientific minds.

Logic and truth are two very different things, but they often look the same to the mind that's performing the logic.

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.