Closed Mind Quotes

Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one's mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you're young it's easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you're a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you're doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you're gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It's a big danger.

Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

A dull head thinks of no better way to show himself wise, than by suspecting everything in his way.

I think to put someone in a box is somewhat narrow-minded.

One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.

Prejudice locks the mind. Nothing can enter. Nothing true can escape.

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.

What can one possibly introduce into a mind that is already full, and full of itself?

A mind that doesn't question its judgements, makes the world very small and dangerous.

I shall never be persuaded that God hath shut up all light of learning within the lantern of Aristotle's brain.

...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.

I can't just close myself off to the world, because then I won't be inspired anymore. I won't be able to talk about nothing.

Ignorance is death. A closed mind is a catafalque.

It is pointless to believe what you see, if you only see what you believe.

It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling like you've heard everything before and that you have nothing left to learn.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn´t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you´re closed up tight. That´s the worst sin of all - the sin of omission.

Pride is a mental factor causing us to feel higher or superior to others. Even our study of dharma can be the occasion for the delusion of pride to arise if we think our understanding is superior to that of everyone else. Pride is harmful because it prevents us from accepting fresh knowledge from a qualified teacher. Just as a pool of water cannot collect on the tip of a mountain, so too a reservoir of understanding cannot be established in a mind falsely elevated by pride.

Obama entered the presidency trailing clouds of intellectual self-regard. His carefully cultivated persona was of a uniquely thoughtful, judicious, deliberative, evidence-driven man comfortable with complexity. The protracted consideration of Keystone supposedly displayed these virtues. Now, however, it is clear that his mind has always been as closed as an unshucked oyster.

An expert is a man who has stopped thinking. Why should he think? He is an expert.

All that makes a lunatic are the very ordinary ideas of mankind shut up inside a man's head.

To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show the darkness but to put out our own eyes.

Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.

He is also wary of people who think they know the path.

Few ever see what is not already inside their heads.