Mental Rigidity Quotes

Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.

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.

The fanatical Communist refuses to believe any unfavorable report or evidence about Russia, nor will he be disillusioned by seeing with his own eyes the cruel misery inside the Soviet promised land. It is the true believer's ability to "shut his eyes and stop his ears" to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger, nor disheartened by obstacles, nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence.

A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind.

When people get their mind made up about something, then it's: 'Don't bother me with facts.' They've got their minds made up and dismiss you out of hand. Some people don't even give you a fair hearing.

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

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

When we have learned something, there's this thing called belief perseverance. Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

When people move from one extreme set of views to embrace another equally batty picture of the world, they expect us to applaud their choice, as if the fact that they have rejected one form of nuttiness somehow validates the screwball views they hold now.

Most men are unwilling to be taught.

A mind should not be so open that the brains fall out; however, it should not be so closed that whatever gray matter which does reside may not be reached.

People who believe their unquestioned thoughts cannot see what is obvious and directly in front of their faces at all times, because they are invested in what they believe to be true. As long as they live out of an unquestioned mind, they must continue to argue with what they believe is happening rather than the reality of what is really happening.

There is nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention the the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.

I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.

Most men … can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives

Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart.

When you're overwhelmed by your emotion, you listen less and you judge more. This is also the reality of the dogmatic mind.

Far more unwaveringly, the neurotic keeps before his eye his God, his idol, his ideal of personality and clings to his guiding principle, losing sight in the meanwhile of reality, whereas the normal person is always ready to dispense with this crutch, this aid, and reckon unhampered with reality.

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

In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.

Almost all the other fellows do not look from the facts to the theory but from the theory to the facts; they cannot get out of the network of already accepted concepts; instead, comically, they only wriggle about inside.