Openness Quotes

There are so many ways to think about almost everything. And none of them is nearly as round as reality.

~ Davis Miller

Andrew Carnegie was an inventor only in the sense that he adopted and adapted the discoveries of others.

~ H.w. Brands

Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Possibly, there was something to be said for the intellectual discipline of second-guessing what you thought was true.

~ Kwame Anthony Appiah

In brokenness comes beauty, divine fragility.

~ Mercyme

The Book that made the nation was destroying the nation.

~ Mark A. Noll

You can recognize a saint by the wounds they don't disguise.

~ Jason Gray

God gave us feelings to feel them, not to judge them. He is the Judge.

~ Jason Gray

The more broken you are, the more light gets through.

~ Jason Gray

Culture is nested in context, not genes.

~ Thomas L. Friedman

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

~ John Maynard Keynes

I was only 44, which is childhood philosophy.

~ Will Durant

Goldwater had never even considered a non-Arizonan. Like a man on his deathbed, he wanted to be surrounded only by friends.

~ Rick Perlstein

A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.

~ Rick Perlstein

A man is as old as his arteries and as young as his ideas.

~ Will Durant

Bonhoeffer did not expect his life to be a tidy edifice of perfection.

~ Samuel Wells

Lippmann was very good at staying young, at not aging and becoming a prisoner of his past experiences.

~ David Halberstam

Nixon under pressure turned only to reporters from publications already favorable to him; Kennedy, in trouble, turned to those most critical and dubious of him, and if anything tended to take those already for him a bit for granted.

~ David Halberstam

He wrote as a young man that God's noblest gift was the gift of an inquiring mind.

~ John Adams

Quite often we are led to aporia, an impasse, unable to proceed a step further. Socrates is almost always there, but even he is only a supporting character. The starring role is given to the philosophical question. It is the philosophical question that is supposed to take center stage, cracking us open to an entirely new variety of experience.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

History teacher Bob Alston's expertise late not in his sweeping knowledge of the topic but in his ability to pick after a tumble, to get a fix on what he does not know, and to generate a roadmap to guide his new learning. He was an expert at cultivating puzzlement it was Alston's ability to stand back from first impressions, to question his quick leaps of mind, to keep track of his questions that together pointed him in the direction of new learning.

~ Sam Wineburg

Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.

~ Richard Rohr

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.

~ William Zinsser

PARAPHRASE: Genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else. It is that you are ready to receive the inspiration.

~ Albert Einstein

We need to pay attention with a particular attitude: one of openness, curiosity, and receptiveness.

~ Russ Harris

To move forward, simply set your intentions, be grateful for what you have, be open to what is possible, and the rest will happen, as a beautiful and effortless journey of cooperation and listening.

~ Bryant Mcgill

All places that the eye of heaven visits are to a wise man ports and happy havens. Teach thy necessity to reason thus, there is no virtue like necessity.

~ William Shakespeare

Amazement + Gratitude + Openness + Appreciation = an irresistible field of energy

~ Frederick Dodson

I could not find any evidence that her circumstances had harmed Jane Austen's work in the slightest. That, perhaps, was the chief miracle about it. Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. Her mind consumed all impediments.

~ Harold Bloom

The day that lay before (was) full of infinite possibilities, though in a million superficial ways it was identical to the day before.

~ Ransom Riggs

We still thought that we were the only two people in the world who were interested in the right kind of things in the right kind of way. C.S. Lewis

~ Philip Zaleski

When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences in custom and training.

~ Frank Herbert

The author perceives nuances of Abigail Adams' character in the occasional errors she makes in readily quoting John Milton. Rather than giving the observer a reason to quibble, they are evidence that she had absorbed Milton's works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory.

~ David Mccullough

Self-help courses will only help you if they teach you to pay attention to life itself.

~ Richard Rohr

The spiritual freedom we seek cannot be found by grasping at, retreating to, or protecting our perceived safe spaces. Our freedom lies in remaining open continuously, not only to Life’s changes but also to the Divine Light within us and others. This is our choice. Although often perceived as a weakness, being open and surrendering to the experience of the present moment is our greatest strength. By authentically living Life in the Now, we submit to Divine guidance where we find the freedom to see everything equally and sacred in Truth.

~ Peter Santos

Walter Pater defined Romanticism as adding strangeness to beauty.

~ Harold Bloom

He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it. Pope Alexander

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

When John Quincy Adams in the Netherlands was placed with elementary students and belittled because he did not speak Dutch, either the author or John Adams accuses school authorities of littleness of soul.

~ Paul C. Nagel

To come to know that nothing is good, nothing is bad, is a turning point; it is a conversion. You start looking in; the outside reality loses meaning. The social reality is a fiction, a beautiful drama; you can participate in it, but then you don’t take it seriously. It is just a role to be played; play it as beautifully, as efficiently, as possible. But don’t take it seriously, it has nothing of the ultimate in it.

~ Osho