Quotes & Sayings About Small Mindedness

How terrible it is to recognize that one's brilliance rests solely upon the small-mindedness of others. — Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

The world of dogmatic Christianity is a place in which thousands of people of quite different types keep on saying the same thing, and the world of 'broad-mindedness' and watered-down 'religion' is a world where a small number of people (all of the same type) say totally different things and change their minds every few minutes. We shall never get re-union from them. — C.S. Lewis

Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea? — Samuel Johnson

Yet decency nagged at their reluctant hearts; and they acknowledged that, too, in unconscious phrases
'I fail to understand ... ', 'I cannot bring myself to overlook ... ', 'Tolerance is all very well up to a point ... '
as if they had tried the ways of magnanimity but found them too exigent. — Shirley Hazzard

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don't like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which irritates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck. — Roger Zelazny

But what if absolute consistency on any issue from the left or the right, religious or secular, is an indication of mediocre intelligence and a lack of intellectual honesty? What if the world is a complex place? What if leadership requires flexibility? What if ideology is a bad substitute for common sense? What if ideological consistency, let alone "purity," is a sign of small-mindedness, maybe even stupidity? — Anonymous

TOLERANCE Neither accept people as they are nor tolerate them. Many people think tolerance is a virtue but tolerance is actually a negative term. If you like something, you do not have to tolerate it. Tolerance indicates a deep sense of dislike that can at any time turn into hatred. It indicates a sense of separateness, small-mindedness, a limitation of consciousness. When you tolerate, it is a temporary state. Tolerance is a potential volcano. If you are tolerating, it means you are just holding on. Acceptance is also negative. You accept that which is not lovable. Tolerance and acceptance come with judgment and separation. Question: "But aren't we supposed to accept people as they are?" If you do not love them, then you have to accept them. I tell you, do not accept people as they are. Just love them as they are. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Thiel rejects the small-mindedness of most of the Valley's entrepreneurialism. The motto of Founders Fund is: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters." But — Richard Byrne Reilly

Racist thought and action says far more about the person they come from than the person they are directed at. — Chris Crutcher

It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement. — Aristotle.

We've lost our sense of ethics; we live in a world of small-mindedness, of gratification without happiness and actions without meaning. — Isabel Allende

Chickenshit is so called - instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit - because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously. — Stephen E. Ambrose

And in that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn't know was a feather on those wings. I could feel them tugging at the air, restless to be airborne. — Frank Cottrell Boyce

The ego doesn't come up to us and say, "Hi, I'm your self-loathing." It's not stupid, because we're not. Rather, it says things like, "Hi, I'm your adult, mature, rational self. I'll help you look out for number one." Then it proceeds to counsel us to look out for ourselves, at the expense of others. It teaches us selfishness, greed, judgment, and small-mindedness. — Marianne Williamson

I'll never understand why some people can't just let others live their lives, you know," Danial said. "You don't have to understand. You don't have to agree. Just leave people alone. When I look at the moon and planets and stars, all that narrow-mindedness and hate seem so petty. The universe is such a big place. One hundred thousand light years just from one end of the Milky Way to the other. One hundred. Thousand. Light years. In the time it's taken for light to travel from one end of our galaxy to the other, thousands of generations have passed. It really makes you realize how small we are, doesn't it? How short our time on earth is. — J.H. Trumble

You have nothing to lose. All that you can lose is your tension and your worry, your little-mindedness, fear, and anxiety. And fear and anxiety, tension and worry in the small, little mind will keep the mind from being free, will keep the mind from experiencing its infinite potential, will keep the mind from becoming more powerful on this planet. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

From Senegalese chauvinism to Wolof tribalism, there is but one small step. And consequently, wherever the petty-mindedness of the national bourgeoisie and the haziness of its ideological positions have been incapable of enlightening the people as a whole or have been unable to put the people first, wherever this national bourgeoisie has proven to be incapable of expanding its vision of the world, there is a return to tribalism, and we watch with a raging heart as ethnic tensions triumph. Since the only slogan of the bourgeoisie is "Replace the foreigners," and they rush into every sector to take the law into their own hands and fill the vacancies, the petty traders such as taxi drivers, cake sellers, and shoe shiners follow suit and call for the expulsion of the Dahomeans or, taking tribalism to a new level, demand that the Fulani go back to their bush or back up their mountains. — Frantz Fanon

If there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs Jones and talk about fishcakes. — Jeanette Winterson

The only issue that I have a problem with when it comes to the new age is the way that people such as myself are diminished by that label. I simply don't consider myself "new age." It's other people's small-mindedness that tries to connect me with someone who, let's say, thinks crystals are the answers to all of life's problems. I never did. There are those who suggest that anyone speaking from a base in California has less to say. That kind of bashing doesn't interest me. — Marianne Williamson

People blame the 1960s for just about everything these days, but it was the decade when all that post-war furtiveness and small-mindedness was finally blown open, and opportunity really came knocking. — Pattie Boyd

As he was wont to remark, Nature has had her day; she has finally exhausted through the nauseating uniformity of her landscapes and her skies, the sedulous patience of men of refined taste. Essentially, what triteness Nature displays, like a specialist who confines himself to his own single sphere; what small-mindedness, like a shopkeeper who stocks only this one article to the exclusion of any other; what monotony she exhibits with her arrangements of mountains and seas! Page 20.
There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artifice. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Jonah can't see how Assyria could serve any useful purpose. How could this commission better Israel? Jonah might even fear that God will reverse His judgment against Nineveh. If that 'unchanging God' changes His mind about Nineveh's destruction, then Jonah's personal religion won't make sense. (Nu 23:19) The truth is, Jonah is not as overwhelmed by his new assignment as he is by his own small mindedness. (page 5) — Michael Ben Zehabe

I don't think haters are small-minded; it's more tragic than that. I think they're great minded, but choose to sell themselves short every day. — Steve Maraboli

What advantage has the person who will not listen over the one who cannot hear? — Joyce Rachelle

I don't think I have rebelled against Latina culture. I have rebelled against those who try to make me warm tortillas for my brothers when they can warm them for themselves, I have rebelled against a patriarchal religion. I rebel against small mindedness in all ways and in every situation but those things are not an intrinsic part of Latina culture and I will fight tooth and nail against anyone who tries to make me feel like I'm less Xicana for not embracing the small-mindedness. — Alice Bag

If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition. — Brennan Manning

Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion. — Guy Kawasaki

I want to live outside of the box, and I definitely don't want to put God in a box, so I want to be able to dream big and kind of let that go of my small-mindedness. — Jodi Benson

To allow only the kind of art that the average man understands is the worst small-mindedness and the murder of mind and spirit. It is my conviction that the intellect can be certain that in doing what most disconcerts the crowd, in pursuing the most daring, unconventional advances and explorations, it will in some highly indirect fashion serve man - and in the long run, all men. — Thomas Mann