George Bernard Shaw Quotes

One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind, and when not to.

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

I'd ask people to keep in mind the idea that if you really understand something, it's even more important for you to consider the possibility of your wrongness. Even if it takes someone dumber than you to point that out.

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.

Narrow minds think nothing right that is above their own capacity.

We seem to have trouble with [critical thinking]. And our political system doesn't help.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.

If we are to use our minds rightly, we must live in an attitude of constant openness and learning.

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

The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

The effective thinker treats arrogance as the major sin of thinking.

The people who are right a lot often change their minds.

It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.

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

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I'm not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I've reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life

I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

If you don't think, and you have no wit and you have so many hangups that you can't look beyond your cup of coffee then you're never going to understand what I'm really saying. Because you know what? You're going to shut down and close off before you hear me. If I'm threatening you, you're going to see it the way you need to see it so you can dismiss me.

The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.

It is impossible to live without brains, either one's own or borrowed.

Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.

To accept opinions is to gain the good solid feeling of being correct without having to think.