Jim Boyd > Jim's Quotes

Showing 1-29 of 29

#1

“All those formal systems, in mathematics and physics and the philosophy of science, which claim to give foundations for certain truth are surely mistaken. I am tempted to say that we do not look for truth, but for knowledge. But I dislike this form of words, for two reasons. First of all, we do look for truth, however we define it, it is what we find that is knowledge. And second, what we fail to find is not truth, but certainty; the nature of truth is exactly the knowledge that we do find.”
― Jacob Bronowski

tags: certain-truth

2 likes

#2

“Ralph Gomory, the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, proposes a tripartite division of science: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The known is taught in the schools and universities and is exhibited in the science museums. But scientists are excited by the unknown. Parenthetically, artists go to art museums to learn; scientists do not go to science museums because those museums act as if it's all known and preordained. That may be changing; exemplars are the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the American Museum of Natural History.

Gomory's tripartite division proposes three distinct areas: the known, the unknown which may someday become known, and the unknowable, which will never be known. The unknown and the unknowable form the boundary of science. Here are examples of questions for which the answers are today unknown.”
― Joseph Traub

tags: complexity-and-information, known, unknowable, unknown

0 likes

#3

“Learn the words of wisdom uttered by the wise and apply them in your own life. Live them - but do not a make a show of reciting them, for he who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass loaded with books.”
― Kahlil Gibran

tags: words-of-the-wise

6 likes

#4

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

1344 likes

#5

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

3460 likes

#6

“Simple words can be given powerful meanings. Wit and wisdom are simple words that speak to truth.”
― Jim Boyd

tags: wit-and-wisdom

0 likes

#7

“Integrity is the soul of leadership! Trust is the engine of leadership!”
― Amine A. Ayad

tags: integrity, leadership, leadership-characteristics, trust

4 likes

#8

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.”
― Victor Hugo

tags: laughter, winter

14 likes

#9

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

9010 likes

#10

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

tags: compassion, einstein, nature, philosophy

7514 likes

#11

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

tags: 1931, art, mystery, philosophy, science

5292 likes

#12

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
― Gustav Flaubert

tags: writing-life

1676 likes

#13

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”
― Frank Zappa

tags: open-mindedness, simile

1498 likes

#14

“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
― George Bernard Shaw

tags: adaptation, change, open-mindedness, self-improvement

2789 likes

#15

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

tags: open-mindedness, prejudice, truth

1354 likes

#16

“It's okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That doesn't give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because you don't like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond what is comfortable.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

tags: communication, disagreement, expression, expressions, humanity, humble, humility, ideas, judgement, judgmental, open-mind, open-mindedness, opinion, opinions, recognition, respect, talent, thought, thoughts, writing

758 likes

#17

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Alan Alda

tags: assumptions, close-mindedness, intelligence, isaac-asimov, knowledge, open-mind, open-mindedness, open-minds, opinions, receptivity, science, science-of-mind

2612 likes

#18

“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

tags: narrow-mind, open-mindedness, perspective

859 likes

#19

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

tags: certainty, ignorance, knowledge, open-mindedness, science, willful-ignorance

834 likes

#20

“It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.”
― Henry David Thoreau

tags: diversity, open-mindedness

402 likes

#21

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

tags: belief, development, evolution, intelligence, misattributed-to-einstein, new-ideas, open-mindedness, thought

344 likes

#22

“Vulnerability is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding, but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable: quake and shake in your boots with it. the new goodness that is coming to you, in the form of people, situations, and things can only come to you when you are vulnerable, i.e. open.”
― Stephen Russell, Barefoot Doctor's Guide to the Tao: A Spiritual Handbook for the Urban Warrior

tags: open-mindedness, taoism, vulnerability

313 likes

#23

“To be evenminded
is the greatest virtue.
Wisdom is to speak
the truth and act
in keeping with its nature.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

tags: heraclitus, open-mindedness, philosophy, wisdom

263 likes

#24

“It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.

Ignorance is our deepest secret.

And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.

Here is a quick test:

If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.

Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.

It will do both of you good.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

tags: adapt, adaptability, assimilate, assimilation, beliefs, change, discovery, ignorance, ignorant, incorporating, introspection, learning, mutability, new, new-thought, open, open-mind, open-minded, open-mindedness, ponder, question, questioning, questions, re-evaluating, receptive, rethink, rethinking, secret, think, thinking, wise

374 likes

#25

“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

tags: life, open, open-mindedness, receptiveness

120 likes

#26

“It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.”
― Milan Kundera, Encounter

tags: argument, close-mindedness, hypothesis, open-mindedness

175 likes

#27

“They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea.”
― Francis Bacon

tags: discovery, object-constancy, open-mindedness

60 likes

#28

“The patterns are simple, but followed together, they make for a whole that is wiser than the sum of its parts. Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle; reinvent. Build a tangled bank.”
― Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

tags: ideas, innovation, life-long-learning, living-life, open-mindedness, opportunity

80 likes

#29

“A different species a different set of values a world completely unlike your own. There is a feeling you can only get when you meet the unknown and open your mind. - Nakajima (Gin no Saji)”
― Hiromu Arakawa

tags: gin-no-saji, learning, lesson, life, manga, open-mindedness, silver-spoon, views

27 likes

All Quotes

Jim Boyd > Jim's Quotes

Tags From Jim’s Quotes