Inflexible Mindset Quotes

There is nothing more dangerous than a person with only one right answer.

"You’re exactly like Charlie." She'd sighed, resigned. "Once you make up your mind, there is no reasoning with you. Of course, exactly like Charlie, you stick by your decisions, too."

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

She live in a mindset that I could never move to

To rest upon a formula is a slumber that, prolonged, means death.

The man of frank and strong prejudices, far from being a political and social menace and an obstacle in the path of progress, is often a benign character and helpful citizen. The chance is far greater, furthermore, that he will be more creative than the man who can never come to more than a few gingerly held conclusions, or who thinks that all ideas should be received with equal hospitality. There is such a thing as being so broad you are flat.

I stare at her. I've always known that it's impossible to argue with Belinda, not because she's particularly good at it, but because she's so bad at it- that there is no common ground to work from. She simply sees the world she wants to see it and no amount of logic can change her mind.

Being consistent meant not departing from convictions already formulated; being a leader meant making other persons accept these convictions. It was a narrow track, and a one-way, but a person might travel a considerable distance on it. A number of dictators have.

Psychosclerosis: the hardening of the attitude which causes a person to cease dreaming, seeing, thinking, and leading.

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.

Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

Those who constantly qualify everything and have no opinions of their own are ultimately just as incapable of tolerance.

I'm as fixed in my opinion as the man who thought he was a hard-boiled egg.

I have heard it remarked that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion they have not reasoned themselves into.

He that is conceited of his Wisdom, is readier to impose Error, than to receive Truth.

Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.

The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.

To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

That singular uncompromising nature I think is always quite attractive, not just for an actor to play, we're attracted to uncompromising people whether they're nice or not, because they're 3D, they're solid, you can define them, it's not wishy washy.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.

When I look around the world and think why is everything working or not working, it's because it's entrenched ideology. You can't solve a problem if you're sitting down with people who say, "All these ideas are off the table because of what I believe."

The softminded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness.