Openness to Experience Quotes

I try to be alert and available. I try to be available for life to happen to me.

You've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people.

In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

You know, I've always been very open to any project.

They say change gets more difficult as we get older - each year we're more stuck in our ways, more reluctant to learn something new.

There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open.

A writer must say yes to life.

I never try and tune anything out. I think that's a mistake. You want to bring all the honest stuff that's going on inside you into your work. Otherwise, you're keeping a lot of authenticity out.

Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive.

There is no creativity without vulnerability.

A second characteristic of the process which for me is the good life, is that it involves an increasingly tendency to live fully in each moment. I believe it would be evident that for the person who was fully open to his new experience, completely without defensiveness, each moment would be new.

The more space and emptiness you can create in yourself, then you can let the rest of the world come in and fill you up.

It really is a fact that liberals are much higher than conservatives on a major personality trait called 'openness to experience.' People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on it like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable.

The quality of artistry is the capacity to assume innocence at will, the quality of experiencing innocence as if for the first time.

may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living whatever they sing is better than to know and if men should not hear them men are old may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if it's sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young and may myself do nothing usefully and love yourself so more than truly there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile

You do not invite experience with your 'yes' and exclude it with your 'no'. There is no exclusion in this attraction-based Universe. Your focus in the invitation.

In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.

Say "yes" to life! "Yes" to wonder, to joy, to despair. "Yes" to pain, "yes" to what you don't understand. Try "yes." Try "always." Try "possible." Try "hopeful." Try "I will." And try "I can."

Non-attachment is not the elimination of desire. It is the spaciousness to allow any quality of mind, any thought or feeling, to arise without closing around it, without eliminating the pure witness of being. It is an active receptivity to life.

I wish I could unknow this, but there is a perception of me that I'm super-sensitive and fragile. And I am super-sensitive, and I don't think that that's a bad thing. To do what I do, I have to remain open.