28 Quotes About Preconceptions

[B]egin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won’t come in.

We might laugh at the notion of plastic tea sets in the jungle, but it is a time-honored ritual for Western travelers to collect preindustrial artifacts to use as home decorations...Possession of primitive artifacts suggests worldly knowledge, just as in the highland communities of Borneo an electronic wristwatch that plays "Happy Birthday" is the mark of a great traveler. Funny thing how travel can narrow the mind.

Your judgment, perceptions, preconceptions, and expectations all cloud the moment. If you want to become more aware, empty your mind, so that you can see the moment more clearly.

By not letting places be themselves we show our contempt for them. We bury them in sentiment, then suffocate them to death in one way or another. I can ruin both the desert and the Museum of Modern Art in New York by carrying to them an insufferable load of distinctions that disallows actually seeing the flora and fauna or the paintings. Children are usually better at finding mushrooms and arrowheads because they are either ignorant of or unwilling to carry the load.

All too often, what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal.

Like Bennett, Virchow didn't understand leukemia. But unlike Bennett, he didn't pretend to understand it. His insight lay entirely in the negative. By wiping the slate clean of all preconceptions, he cleared the field for thought.

Intelligence people are no different from anybody else. They have preconceptions, and when they see them in real life, it reinforces how brilliant they think they are.

It [treating trauma] may even cause you to reconsider some of your previous views of the world and to revise your sociopolitical perspectives.

The shells are very subtle, being prejudice against someone because he is somehow different, doesn’t make you robust; indeed it makes you clumsy