Mary Wollstonecraft Quotes

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Had it not been for you, I should have remained what I was when we first met, a prejudiced, narrow-minded being, with contracted sympathies and false knowledge, wasting my life on obsolete trifles, and utterly insensible to the privilege of living in this wondrous age of change and progress.

Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year

By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached.

We still have a lot of work to do in American culture. More open-mindedness is happening - in some cases rapidly, in some, slowly.

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.

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

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

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.

Quick condemnation of all that is not ours, of views with which we disagree, of ideas that do not attract us, is the sign of a narrow mind, of an uncultivated intelligence. Bigotry is always ignorant, and the wise boy, who will become the wise man, tries to understand and to see the truth in ideas with which he does not agree.

Only idiots refuse to change their minds.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

Listen, the next revolution is gonna be a revolution of ideas.

And I've always said, 'If two people think the same thing about everything, one of them isn't necessary.' We need to be able to understand that if we're going to make real progress.

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.

I can't wait until we get to the stage where we don't have to explain anymore.

I have been constantly telling people to encourage people, to question the unquestioned and not to be ashamed to bring up new ideas, new processes to get things done.

It is futile to ask a person who is narrow minded or close minded, to give his judgment for he is not willing to accommodate suggestions and opinions from others and hence, his wisdom remains restricted and is not allowed to evolve, and so he is not able to use his wisdom efficiently.

America has believed that in differentiation, not uniformity, lies the path of progress.

The spirit of the age is the very thing a great man changes.

We … need education in the obvious – to learn to transcend our own convictions and to leave room for much that we hold dear to be done away with short of revolution by the orderly change of law.

History shows us that the youth are usually a step ahead of their elders when change is required.

Yet you must not cling to the words of the old sages either; they, too, may not be right. Even if you believe them, you should be alert so that, in the event that something superior comes along, you may follow that.

Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.