Whilst our Hearts are violently set upon any thing, there is no convincing us that we shall ever be of another Mind.
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.
Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.
At a certain age some people's minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
An obstinate person does not hold opinions; they hold them.
Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.
WE ARE ALL TRAPPED in our own way of thinking, trapped in our own way of relating to people. We get so used to seeing the world our way that we come to think that the world is the way we see it.
A mind set in its ways is wasted. Don't do it.
Memory runs along deep, fixed channels in the brain, like electricity along its conduits; only a cataclysm can make the electrons rear up in shock and slide over into another channel. The human mind seems doomed to believe, as simply as a rooster believes, that where we are now is the only possibility
Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed, and I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses.
The tendency of old age to the body, say the physiologists, is to form bone. It is as rare as it is pleasant to meet with an old man whose opinions are not ossified.
Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them.
Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether in the long run it works more damage than softness of head.
A person who knows all the answers, has an opinion on everything, has a certainty backed up by rational argument, has very little possibility of further progress. Such a person is unlikely to walk away from a discussion with anything more than a reaffirmation of how right he or she has been all along.
What happens is that you discover you're carrying so much weight that 90 percent of what you thought yesterday you are thinking about today and will think about again tomorrow. Your mind doesn't change because you are carrying too large a load. So the mind is caught. It's seized by its own structures. It can't consider different ways of thinking or doing or being or relating. It's all you can do with your psychic energy to keep pulling yourself along with this huge bag that you are dragging behind you.
A general limitation of the human mind is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have changed. Once you adopt a new view of the world (or any part of it), you immediately lose much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed.
having considerable mind, changing it became almost as ponderous an operation as moving a barn, although not nearly so stable.
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.
The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without.
No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else. All the dogmatic stations in life have the effect of fixing a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they mesmerised the subject.
