Benjamin Franklin Quotes

If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.

He that never changes his opinion never corrects mistakes and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.

Begin challenging your assumptions. Your assumptions are the windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile or the light won't come in.

It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to keep it.

Only stupid people don't change their minds.

I am constantly evolving. If I believe in a particular philosophy today, I may have a contradictory opinion tomorrow.

We do but learn to-day what our better advanced judgements will unteach us tomorrow.

There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.

The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

It is hard to imagine 10 years is not quite long enough to learn a lesson.

Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts.

Most men hate the necessity of revising their convictions.

Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, by reiteration chiefly.

Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way.

When the facts change, one ought to change one’s opinion.

I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve of them; for having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise .... In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such .... I doubt too whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution.

We need the self-confidence to admit that at best we possess only a partial understanding of the truth, which can be enlarged by refining our views in light of new arguments, new circumstances and new insights. But this requires us to listen to others, to weigh their arguments with care, and maybe even to learn from them.

A certain degree of intellectual humility is a good thing.

I'm sure I've changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up - as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I've changed my mind about some food that I didn't like when I was young.

I always think there's something you can learn.

Having learned something, we tend to cling to that belief, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. New information comes in all time, and the thing we ought to be thinking about doing is changing our beliefs as that new information comes in.

Sometimes you have to experience things for yourself to learn the lessons that you need to learn.

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from the Port of London; and having brought a chart of the Thames on deck at his first setting out, should obstinately use no other for the whole voyage.

Pride comes from not knowing yourself and the world. The older you grow, and the more you see, the less reason you will find for being proud. Ignorance and inexperience are the pedestal of pride; once the pedestal is removed - pride will soon come down.