Ann Romney Quotes

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.

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

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

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 power to question is the basis of all human progress.

Posing good questions is harder than it might seem... It's hard because asking good questions requires you to see past the easy answers and to focus instead on the difficult, the tricky, the mysterious, the awkward, and sometimes the painful. ... Great leaders don't have all the answers, but they know how to ask the right questions - questions that force others and themselves to move past old and tired answers, questions that open up possibilities that, before the question, went unseen.

In the course of your education you have always been taught to look for the right answer - but you must also know that in life, sometimes the right answer is that there isn't one.

There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

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)

I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun.

The most essential mental quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on a large scale, is much stupidity.

The critical mind is the creative mind.

Too much gravity argues a shallow mind.

Solutions are not the answer.

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

The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.

Think your own thoughts.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

My characteristics as a scientist stem from a non-conformist upbringing, a sense of being something of an outsider, and looking for different perceptions in everything from novels, to art to experimental results. I like complexity and am delighted by the unexpected. Ideas interest me.

An intellectual is someone who avoids the mundane by lowering his handicap.

We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world.