Quotes & Sayings About Openness

The universe is full of doors. — Frank Herbert

Opportunities for fraud are open and they are taken advantage of. The most elementary precautions are neither taken nor even contemplated. The reverse is the case. People such as myself who attempt to bring openness and accountability to the system are pursued, suspended and dismissed. — Marta Andreasen

He loved his family, his friends, his writing, his painting; he knew their flaws, but they neither surprised nor embittered him. — Philip Zaleski

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

During relaxation we drop our guard. Particularly in conversation. Relaxed conversation leads to openness. And in openness we often reveal what should never be revealed. — Edward Carey

Because there was no pre-existing patrician elite, those successful in the new book industry could write very swiftly to the top of the social hierarchy. — Andrew Pettegree

We are going through a sexual tempest, a bombardment provided by unprecedented exploitation of cheap sex by moviemakers, theater owners, publishers, and producers of pornography. [There is more] openness of talk about sex, acceptance of public nudity ... homosexuality. Sex revolution, no! But sex pollution? Yes!! — Billy Graham

Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control. — Howard Rheingold

By listening with active openness, they help other people to articulate their own values more clearly and so to bring a richer vision of value into the relationship. "Under the relational conception of power, what is truly for the good of anyone or all of the relational partners is not a preconceived good. The true good is not a function of controlling or dominating influence. The true good is an emergent from deeply mutual relationships."6 — C. Robert Mesle

Stand fully in the now moment with gratitude, enthusiasm, openness, and readiness to respond to Life as it greets you. — Michael Beckwith

But was it worth anything?
That's the hopelessness of it. The openness of it. The part of it I can never understand.
I am afraid of ambiguity and certainity and permanence and impermanence.
And so is everybody else. — Katherine Ewell

The fact that California was the most cosmopolitan state in the union, as a result of the gold rush, simply made white voters more susceptible to racist and xenophobic arguments. — H.W. Brands

He asks, "how hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay, and Google?"33 Wu is putting his finger on a disquieting new reality - that the new communication medium a younger generation gravitated to because of its promise of openness, transparency, and deep social collaboration masks another persona more concerned with ringing up profit by advancing a networked Commons. — Jeremy Rifkin

The third basic need of a male in a relationship is an attractive woman; for a woman, honesty and openness. — Myles Munroe

Counseling has to do with intuition, with work on oneself, with the quietness of one's mind and the openness of one's heart. — Ram Dass

Reading what you want, and having one book lead to the next, is the way I found my discipline. — Joseph Campbell

Your path is your own, but you must walk side by side with others, with compassion and generosity as your beacons. If anything is required it is this: fearlessness in your examination of life and death; Willingness to continually grow; and openness to the possibility that the ordinary is extraordinary, and that your joys and your sorrows have meaning and mystery — Elizabeth Lesser

We have retreated from the perennial values. I don't think that we need any new values. The most important thing is to try to revive the universally known values from which we have retreated.
As a young man, I really took to heart the Communist ideals. A young soul certainly cannot reject things like justice and equality. These were the goals proclaimed by the Communists. But in reality that terrible Communist experiment brought about repression of human dignity. Violence was used in order to impose that model on society. In the name of Communism we abandoned basic human values. So when I came to power in Russia I started to restore those values; values of "openness" and freedom. — Mikhail Gorbachev

Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviourally ... to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life. — Anthony Venn-Brown

Only gratefulness, in the form of limitless openness for surprise, lays hold of the fullness of life in hope. — David Steindl-Rast

One way to measure a particular doctor's openness and attitude toward women in general is simply to ask about the doctor's opinion of midwifery. — Marsden Wagner

It is time we recognized that the only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. — Sam Harris

The way forward is for governments to consciously pursue monetary and fiscal stability through setting clear objectives, establishing proper rules, and requiring openness and transparency - the new rules of the game. — Gordon Brown

Openness to change is key to implementing new knowledge. That is why one who is indifferent to change is not a friend of knowledge. — Eraldo Banovac

The young man, who intends no ill,
Believes that none is intended, and therefore
Acts with openness and candor: but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it. — Samuel Johnson

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962] — John F. Kennedy

The borders of my bodyhood coincide with those of my openness to the world. They are in fact at any given time identical, though they are always changing with the fluid expansion and contraction of my relationships to the world. — Medard Boss

If you don't try to stop whatever is going on in your mind, but merely observe it, eventually you'll begin to feel a tremendous sense of relaxation, a vast sense of openness within your mind - which is in fact your natural mind, the naturally unperturbed background against which various thoughts come and go. — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Outwardly I was all confidence and openness; inwardly I was spiteful and lonely and unaware of how to relate to the world. I wanted so much to be good but only knew how to appear that way by being bad. — M.E. Thomas

Sometimes it's better to show our vulnerability / pain / regrets so others don't think us impervious / unapproachable - be real / open — Jay Woodman

College is about exposing students to many things and creating an aphrodisiac atmosphere so that they might fall in lifelong love with a few. — David Brooks

Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

I would define love very simply: as a potent blend of openness and warmth, which allows us to make real contact, to take delight in and appreciate, and to be at one with
our selves, others, and life itself. Openness
the heart's pure, unconditional yes
is love's essence. And warmth is love's basic expression, arising as a natural extension of this yes
the desire to reach out and touch, connect with, and nourish what we love. — John Welwood

[P]eople think of compassion as, like, kindness. The image comes to mind of some nice New Age guy bending to something with a look on his face like he's about to cry. And I don't think that's it. I think of it more as a quality of openness that comes with being in a state of unusual attentiveness. — George Saunders

There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124) — Stephen Levine

In any relationship I believe love should flow naturally . We cannot control it, make other person guilty or punish it to happen.
Love need patience , acceptance and trust. For love to come we make a hard and fast rule on from where, who and we chase it.
Love flow naturally.
When you feel scarcity of love , you need to be patience , big hearted, whole. Remain in your own love zone do not push, control because love is natural. You cannot ask or demand for it.
We might not get the people who we want us to love but there are people who will step in and they can see the light or flow of our love as it is.
We do not need to transform anyone, we need to know our love towards ourselves and how it flows in others.
When resistance is not there, when openness comes in a relationship . We bend, we are flexible and we trust our loving nature . We become less depended on what other is giving us. We do get fair love and acceptance too. — Archna Mohan

I think what draws me to young people is there is always this kind of openness that reacts very strongly to things. Sometimes when you get older, you react much less. That's also a reason why a lot of young people get hurt because if you're open, you're more subject to being hurt by things. — Lukas Moodysson

I find that when you open the door toward openness and transparency, a lot of people will follow you through. — Kirsten Gillibrand

I began doing writing projects and art and design projects to explore a new way of seeing Canada. Roots is one more way of continuing this exploration. I want to present a wide-open Canadian sense of color, adventure, communication and openness that defines our country. — Douglas Coupland

You begin to notice what it is that makes this person a teacher, beyond the limits of his individuality and personality. Thus the principle of the "universality of the guru" comes into the picture as well. Every problem you face in life is a part of your marriage. Whenever you experience difficulties, you hear the words of the guru. This is the point at which one begins to gain one's independence from the guru as lover, because every situation becomes an expression of the teachings. First you surrendered to your spiritual friend. Then you communicated and played games with him. And now you have come to the state of complete openness. As a result of this openness you begin to see the guru-quality in every life-situation, that all situations in life offer you the opportunity to be as open as you are with the guru, and so all things can become the guru. — Chogyam Trungpa

Trust, love, what we call sexy, who we trust in a business situation, are all based on how open we are. Openness is bodily openness, muscular relaxation, heart openness as opposed to hiding behind some emotional wall, and spiritual openness, which is actually feeling so fully into the moment that there's no separation between you and the entire moment. — David Deida

He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself. I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could "hold my own" with average young man in prosperous circumstances. — Charles Dickens

Life and study have persuaded me of the openness of history. There is no inevitability in history. Thinking about what might have happened, what could have happened, is a necessary element in trying to understand what did happen. And if, as I believe, individual acts of decency and courage make a difference, then they need to be recorded and remembered. — Fritz Stern

As the Indian government has embraced greater economic openness, the creativity and expertise of the Indian workforce has been unleashed onto the world economic stage. — Henry Paulson

He might not take their advice, but he took their temperature. — Richard Brookhiser

Human societies vary in lots of independent factors affecting their openness to innovation. — Jared Diamond

I'm somebody's who's in favor of transparency and openness. — John Barrasso

Real friends require honesty, openness, and even vulnerability. They also require attention and simple acts of kindness. — Mary Pipher

You can't build a wall round a village.
The sun and the wind
will always find their way in. — Igor Goldkind

The secret of the Internet's success has been its openness to new services. — Edward Felten

We want America in the twenty-first century to be the launching pad where everyone in the world comes to launch his or her moon shot. We want it to be the place where innovators and entrepreneurs the world over come to locate all or part of their operations because our workforce is so productive; our infrastructure and Internet bandwidth are so advanced; our openness to talent from anywhere is second to none; our funding for basic research is so generous; our rule of law, patent protection, and investment- and manufacturing-friendly tax code is superior to what can be found in any other country; and our openness to collaboration is unparalleled - all because we have updated and expanded our formula for success. — Thomas L. Friedman

I have realized that mystery is what keeps people away, and I've grown tired of smoke and mirrors. I yearn for the clean, well-lighted place. So let's peek behind the curtain and hail the others like us. The open-faced sandwiches who take risks and live big and smile with all of their teeth. These are the people I want to be around. — Amy Poehler

When there is an openness to fear, where can it be found? — Gangaji

Always be open to inspiration. You never know where it may come from. Begin with an open mind, end with an inspired heart. — Sheri Fink

In whatever number of years I have on Earth, I think that promoting the values of free expression, the openness of the Internet, that's the best use of my time. — Eric Schmidt

We must be free for the truth; and conversely, to be able to be open toward the truth may be our deepest freedom as human creatures. — William Barrett

Two things I'm trying to work on are openness and flexibility. — Lili Taylor

Musicality means openness to what is present and what is desired, the ability to make the most of what is currently here. — Anette Prehn

Watch for subjects as you go but the city or the country. Keep your eyes and ears open, and you will hear and see angels. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

...that's how love is. It creates pain and joy at the same time, and for the same reason, because deeper aspects of ourselves are brought to light. The openness that love brings, if you are lucky, isn't just being open to the best things in life. You also feel like a child again, and that brings a sense of need that is very vulnerable. — Deepak Chopra

The most reliable predictor of whether students liked a course, it turned out, was their answer to the question 'Did the professor respect you? — Kwame Anthony Appiah

The amount of trust and bandwidth that you build up working with someone for five, seven, 10 years? It's just awesome. I care about openness and connectedness in a global sense. — Mark Zuckerberg

The way a man penetrates the world should be the same way he penetrates his woman: not merely for personal gain or pleasure, but to magnify love, openness, and depth. — David Deida

In Russia everything is a secret, but there is no secrecy. — Robert K. Massie

Well we are hoping that the power of the community of free nations is such that our sovereignty our rights are not going to be challenged by anybody who's going try to undermine the freedom, the openness of our societies and our security. — Douglas Feith

Teaching is the art of serendipity. Each of us has the experience of finding out that something we intended as only the most casual of remarks, or the stray example, changes the way some students thought to the point of changing their lives. — Greg Carlson

I've got a lot of different religious ideas circling through my family, but the positive thing is that I was raised with a lot of openness and compassion. — Kali Hawk

Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships. — Randy Alcorn

Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter
discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer
comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature. — Gary Chapman

The personality trait most associated with an interest in the arts is called openness, the tendency to seek out novelty in intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional pursuits. — Adam Grant

The life-changing encounters that John Quincy Adams made as an adolescent on his own in Stockholm began with a friendship he struck up at a bookstore. — Paul C. Nagel

'Network neutrality' is sometimes called 'Internet freedom' or 'Internet openness' and is a legal principle that would forbid cable and phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast from blocking some websites or providing special priority to others. — Marvin Ammori

Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment. — Claudia Rankine

Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience. — Tara Brach

Amusement and annoyance are, perhaps, both forms of denial. — Paul C. Nagel

Faith is a state of openness or trust. — Alan Watts

Openness to God demands our growing acceptance that we cannot create blueprints for our own lives. Though God's character is unchanging, the ways of God are unpredictable, and there is a difference between arbitrariness and unpredictability. — Enuma Okoro

Remember that breath walking - as with any meditation technique - should not be pursued with a grim determination to 'get it right.' The point is to cultivate openness, relaxation and awareness, which can include awareness of your undisciplined, wandering mind. — Andrew Weil

Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way. — Federico Fellini

My Mother

My mother was not educated but she was the best teacher I've ever had in my entire life. She had what it's called natural wisdom, bless her precious soul. Here some of her teachings: Human Values:
Love: Learn to love because everything that's based on love has a deep rooted foundation.
Kindness: Be kind all the time but never let anyone take advantage of your kindness.
Peace: Learn to have peace with yourself when the world turns against you because it starts with you.
Honesty: Be honest to yourself and then to the others.
Respect: Respect others and they will respect you.
Openness: Be always transparent especially when you are hurting. Never pretend that it's all okay.
Loyalty: Always be loyal to your family and make sure your family comes before anything else.
She taught me to learn to compose myself when life gets tough and unfair to me.

I love you mama & Happy Mothers Day — Euginia Herlihy

I think a Christian definition of the mind should be: an openness to whatever the individual and collective mind reveals to us. — Marilynne Robinson

The dynamic character of China's nonstatist economic transformation, including its social openness to the rest of the world, is not mutually compatible in the long run with a relatively closed and bureaucratically rigid Communist dictatorship. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

Genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's Syndrome. — David Foster Wallace

Openness, as currently conceived, is a way of making surrender to whatever is most powerful, or worship of vulgar success, look principled. — Allan Bloom

There are a number of traits that combine to create entrepreneurial potential. We find that openness coordinates very well with successful entrepreneurs. The more open-minded you are, the more you see the world as it actually is. The more closed-minded, the more you see the world as you want it to be. — Adeo Ressi

Grace is openness. By remaining open, you let go of your ego and narrow-minded views, and allow divine grace to express itself through you. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Such grace is never held in abeyance, never earned or deserved. It is not given to some and not to others. Grace is ever present; it is only our openness to it that comes and goes. In one sense, The Way of Liberation is a means of opening up to grace. — Adyashanti

She was just too curious to stay in a self-imposed mental straight-jacket for very long. — David Brooks

The mental framework that makes science enjoyable is accessible to everyone. It involves curiosity, careful observation, a disciplined way of recording events, and finding ways to tease out the underlying regularities in what one learns. It also requires the humility to be willing to learn from the results of past investigators, coupled with enough skepticism and openness of mind to reject beliefs that are not sup-ported by facts. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of thehuman mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstacy. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When we sit down to meditate, we connect with something unconditional - a state of mind, a basic environment that does not grasp or reject anything. Meditation is probably the only activity that doesn't add anything to the picture. Everything is allowed to come and go without further embellishment. Meditation is a totally nonviolent, non aggressive occupation. Not filling the space, allowing for the possibility of connecting with unconditional openness - this provides the basis for real change. — Pema Chodron

This openness, which is closed again as soon as we face a partial relationship, the one who understands only one part of us, is the miraculous openess which takes place in whole love. — Anais Nin

The deadly weapon against totalitarian society is openness - doing everything very openly on the Internet, letting people know every detail, any little development. Once it is out there, everybody can make their own judgement. [Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden. — Ai Weiwei

There is more openness in LA to possibilities than on the East Coast of America. There is a pioneering spirit there that stems from the reason people went out there in the first place-to find something new. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

Sincerity is a certain openness of heart. It is to be found in very few, and what we commonly look upon to be so is only a cunningsort of dissimulation, to insinuate ourselves into the confidence of others. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The obligations of citizens is to make it clear that Aboriginal issues are central to our public concerns, that we want them dealt with in a fully democratic context of openness and justice, that we will vote accordingly. — John Ralston Saul

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown. — Alan W. Watts

I read things that male relationship experts write about women and I read things that female relationship experts write about men, then I feel a true sadness in my heart. Why can't there be a simple, pure, direct openness? Why can't there be a simple, real, open trust? The truth is that male or female, gay or straight - we are all people - we have all been broken and put back together in so many different ways ... it's really just about learning how to recognize the sound of the other one's cracks. And that's what it's really about, just that. — C. JoyBell C.

When her daughter was frightened of a thunderstorm, the author pointed out the verse which declares the Heavens reveal the glory of God. When another storm occurred, her daughter ran to the window. Mommy, God's really showing off today! — Beth Moore

She thought she'd hate it, this huge, faceless city far from home, but the opposite was true: she felt nothing but relief. The heedless sprawl of Denver, its chaotic snarl of subdivisions and freeways; the openness of the high plains and the indifferent mountains; the way people talked to each other, easily, without pretense, and the fact that nearly everyone was from somewhere else: exiles, like her. — Justin Cronin