A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.
If you never change your mind, why have one?
Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people's minds.
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.
The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
A question is a polite way of demanding something.
An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
If you understand the system you can design appropriate action.
The simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.
In 80% of Socrates' dialogues there was no constructive outcome. He saw his role as simply pointing out what was "wrong.
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven.
Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.
To cultivate a pleasure in being wrong sounds perverse, yet losing an argument means escaping from an old idea and the acquisition of a new way of looking at things.
When the positive revolution takes hold it will no longer be enough for politicians to gain points through attack or being negative. Politicians will be expected to be constructive.
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There may be more danger in prejudices which are apparently founded in logic than in those which are acknowledged as emotions. (p69)
Instead of waiting for our attention to be pulled towards something unusual, we can set out frameworks for ‘directing’ our attention in a conscious manner.
