Nathaniel Branden Quotes

I know friends of mine who have never changed their mind about anything in their lives, despite evidence from all directions. And I think if you can keep an open mind and some understanding, that helps you stay young.

You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.

The test of truth in life is not whether we can remember what we learned in school, but whether we are prepared for change.

Fluid intelligence is not a Big Five personality trait: It's a measurement of one's ability to rapidly learn and apply a rule set. As an entrepreneur, you're rapidly dealing with different issues, and your ability to switch from one issue to another is very important.

Yes - it's the same in any other work - the more you massage your thinking the more capable I believe you are of expanding how you go about things and learning.

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Well, the fact is that one imagination is critically important, and if you have had your imagination stimulated by what is basically a variety of subjects, you are much more amenable to accepting, to understanding and interacting with the realities of the world.

My brain is open.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

It takes intellectual stamina to stay open, as a leader and a mind, to absorb information and adversity.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

Two key ingredients in any successful chef: a quick learner and someone with a sharp brain.

To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, “are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939)

Try fighting with your head for a change... it's a good one, even if it does resist learning.

In the real world, very smart people fail and mediocre people rise. Part of what makes people fail or succeed are skills that have nothing to do with IQ. Also, the idea that intelligence can be gauged by an IQ test is erroneous.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

I think if someone is writing continuously for 10 years and has not changed their mind about something - there's something wrong with them. They're not really thinking.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

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

A curious mind is the most important attribute any man or woman can possess.

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

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.