Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.

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.

Most often people seek in life occasions for persisting in their opinions rather than for educating themselves.

Belief gets in the way of learning.

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!

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

If you cannot be open-minded, then you do not possess your ideas, your ideas possess you.

One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.

The rare person is still interested in new advances when they are adults. There is possibly a correlation with intelligence. In any case, you have to be fairly bright to keep learning and changing attitudes as you get older.

My point is that perceptual bias can affect nut jobs and scientists alike. If we hold too rigidly to what we think we know, we ignore or avoid evidence of anything that might change our mind.

Our opinions become fixed at the point where we stop thinking.

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

I'm a huge believer in learning anything from multiple points of view.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess commitment to some special or constricting idea.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers

Who wants to hear that he is wrong when he can be told that he is right? …. We are losing the ability to change our mind because of our media.

Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. New information comes in all time, and the thing we ought to be thinking about doing is changing our beliefs as that new information comes in.

Resist the temptation to subject yourself only to that which re-affirms what you already think.

My education has allowed me to be more open to ideas which I would not have been had I not been as educated.

I don't really believe that people read just the stuff they agree with.

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

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

One thing in life is for certain, the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.

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