Flexibility of Thought Quotes

When the facts change, you change your mind. I know that is a hard concept for people to get sometimes.

No wise man has called a change of opinion in constancy.

Remember that to change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free than you were before.

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

The people who are right a lot often change their minds.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.

A candid spirit is mightier than the most persistent dogmatism.

A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness

I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from the Port of London; and having brought a chart of the Thames on deck at his first setting out, should obstinately use no other for the whole voyage.

A confused mind is one that is open to the possibility of change.

Let no one think that flexibility and a predisposition to compromise is a sign of weakness or a sell-out.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

People who are right most of the time are people who change their minds often

I'm not ideological. I think sometimes when people are ideological, the world's a lot easier. Because it falls into either right or wrong, or black or white, or whatever. To me, I'm still trying to figure out a lot of things.

People who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds.

If your mind is open to opposing ideas, your intelligence will go up. If your mind is closed to opposing ideas, your ignorance is in control. Intelligence or ignorance? Your ability to keep an open mind and appreciate multiple points of view is conscious choice. And one that can open your world, and shape your childs future.

If men were stubborn just in proportion as they were right, stubbornness would take her seat among the virtues; but men are generally stubborn just in proportion as they are ignorant and wrong.

I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.

Keeping an open mind is always important.

I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things.

The wind of change, whatever it is, blows most freely through an open mind.

I'm still working out my opinions - it's always a question mark. I leave loads of space open, and people don't like that.

One thing must be avoided at all costs: narrow-mindedness, pedantry, dull pettiness.