Dorothy L. Sayers Quotes

One thing about being narrow-minded: you'll never be lonely.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who think differently from him.

Nor bigots who but one way see, through blinkers of authority.

The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.

Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

There is nothing more dangerous than an idea, when it is held by a man who has only one.

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.

The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.

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.

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

Certainty sees things in restrictive, protective, aggressive ways, and thus isn't seeing at all.

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.

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

There is nothing more dangerous than a person with only one right answer.

I think in many ways narrow minded-attitudes lead to extreme thinking.

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

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.

To me, anything that is a church is really just far too close minded.

The man of frank and strong prejudices, far from being a political and social menace and an obstacle in the path of progress, is often a benign character and helpful citizen. The chance is far greater, furthermore, that he will be more creative than the man who can never come to more than a few gingerly held conclusions, or who thinks that all ideas should be received with equal hospitality. There is such a thing as being so broad you are flat.

I think we need to think of capitalism as a very bad way of organizing communism. Much of what we do is already communism, so just expand it.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

A fundamentalist is someone who wants to substitute what he believes for what you believe," Max said. "And someone who thinks he knows the will of God better than anyone else.

There is no tariff so injurious as that with which sectarian bigotry guards its commodities. It dwarfs the soul by shutting out truths from other continents of thought, and checks the circulation of its own.