Malcolm X Quotes

Don't get seduced by your own stuff; work hard to keep a blank slate state of mind each time you watch your film.

The only way to have real success in science, the field I'm familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory , you must try to explain what's good and what's bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty .

If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data.

I come to every case with an open mind. Every case is new to me.

The detached observer's view is one window on the world.

In examining the evidence of the Christian religion, it is essential to the discovery of truth that we bring to the investigation a mind freed, as far as possible, from existing prejudice, and open to conviction.

An outsider can see some things much better.

I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right.

I'm generally slow to anger, quick to forgive, and I take in information before making decisions. So no matter how controversial the decision, my general demeanour is to put on white lab coat and gloves and look at the evidence, weigh the arguments and see what makes sense.

I take what I see work. I'm a strict believer in the scientific principle of believing nothing, only taking the best evidence available at the present time, interpreting it as best you can, and leaving your mind open to the fact that new evidence will appear tomorrow.

One must be careful not to prejudge the past.

For me, it's always more interesting to look at things when you don't really have a horse in the race, so to speak.

I attack ideas. I don't attack people. And some very good people have some very bad ideas. And if you can't separate the two, you gotta get another day job. You don't want to be a judge. At least not a judge on a multi-member panel.

I would say that I am an academic in politics. I have never abandoned my academic approach to observe reality, independently from the subject and its constant changes.

An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.

If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact.

There are many different ways to look at a situation, and it's important to look at things the way they are.

It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.

Can one consider controversy without falling into it?

Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science.

I try not to get impressed. I just try to look at what I see.

Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know-it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.

The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification-judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind-essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.

It's very difficult to look at it in a kind of a free manner, what reality is. That was my first struggle, to see it as it is, rather than tainted by my own previous thoughts.