Bashir Assad Quotes

You cannot reform your society or institution without opening your mind.

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.

I came from a different mind-set growing up, and my mind has changed.

Begin challenging your assumptions. Your assumptions are the windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile or the light won't come in.

A liberal education... frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family and even his nation.

Not to unlearn what you have learned is the most necessary kind of learning.

To change your mind about something is always difficult. I think that people who are big enough to admit they were wrong can be counted on your fingers.

It only takes a day to change someone from an anti-intellectual to an intellectual by persuading him that he might be one!

Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is not the freedom to be wrong.

It's only a thought, and a thought can be changed. I am not limited by any past thinking. I choose my thoughts with care. I constantly have new insights and new ways of looking at my world. I am willing to change and grow.

Surround yourself with people strong enough to change your mind.

My sense from talking to college students is that you have a healthier sense of the diversity of opinions or arguments or analysis about issues. In our day it was just sort of, "Well gee, this is what the news says so that's the way it is." It didn't really get challenged that much.

We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.

I learned early that you'd better know what you're talking about. You'd better realize that certain issues are going to be so hot - no matter what reason, what logic you apply to it - you're going to be met with an opposition just because their viewpoint is different, and there's no way they're going to accept your reasoning. Furthermore, they're going to attack you because you will be portrayed as not being credible: "You're an actor. What do you know?"

Change your mind about something significant every day.

Just because you've got a mind like a hammer doesn't mean you have to treat everyone else like a nail

I don't ever want to be the type of person to tell you what to think or what to believe. Whatever stage in your life that you are in, I want you to organically reach whatever conclusions that you possibly reach.

To understand a new idea, break an old habit.

A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.

I've come up with my own cure for a closed mind: try it once, and see.

Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

She used to pride herself on her refusal to see two sides of an argument, but increasingly she accepts that issues are more ambiguous and complicated than she once thought.

That's your responsibility as a person, as a human being - to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.