Quotes About Preconceptions

#1. I took acres of fertile ignorance up to that place. And they started to pour preconceptions all over it. Like forty tons of cement. No thanks. I got out before it hardened. I did a year, passed

William McIlvanney

#2. Remember preconceptions? Even though I'd landed hoping simply to somehow scrape the transatlantic fare home, I'd been an arrogant swine, imbued with that Old World toffee-nosed attitude: The United States of America's got no culture, not deep down.

Jonathan Gash

#3. She had called herself a whore. That was a man's word, a shame-word flung at a woman. But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was. She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it.

Robin Hobb

#4. We hide behind our assumptions and preconceptions as if they were fortresses - shutting people out. I love to witness the fall of a preconception; the way it renders you naked

Karen Hitchcock

#5. We are doomed to failure without a daily destruction of our various preconceptions.

Taiichi Ohno

#6. Some of the best moments I've ever written have come about because someone, somewhere, blew my preconceptions out of the water and dropped a detail in passing that took the work in an entirely new, entirely unexpected, direction.

Greg Rucka

#7. The purpose of making people feel uncomfortable is to play with their preconceptions.

Mike White

#8. I've covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don't think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.

Ben Gibbard

#9. In order to establish a real teacher-student relationship it is necessary for us to give up all our preconceptions regarding that relationship and the condition of opening and surrender. Surrender means opening oneself completely, trying to get beyond fascination and expectation.

Chogyam Trungpa

#10. I am finally getting the chance to build large structures and break preconceptions that my designs are just sculptures for people to be in. But my work always comes down to the human scale.

Thomas Heatherwick

#11. The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.

Carl Sagan

#12. Right preconceptions about people bring success in working with them.

Sunday Adelaja

#13. The interesting thing is, when you play a real-life character or someone based in a book, you always come up against people's preconceptions of what they have in their heads.

Harry Lloyd

#14. They will set aside what they have believed about the world, divesting themselves of all preconceptions, all judgments ... They will do it, then they will send their minds out to seek the truth.

Sheri S. Tepper

#15. It's important to discuss ideas but it's more important to surrender control and preconceptions.

Judith Schaechter

#16. I try not to handle the foreign subjects with my English techniques and preconceptions, but to paint Sydney in Sydney and Tangier in Tangier.

John Newbery

#17. I've never been a fan of directors who clutter a piece with all sorts of crazy preconceptions or weird ideas.

Dan Stevens

#18. SF has at least the advantage of not depending on preconceptions.

John Sladek

#19. Not that I like having my direst preconceptions about humanity confirmed or anything. But I was right.

Rob Thomas

#20. 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.

Tom Clancy

#21. I do not know much. But there are certain advantages in not knowing. Like virgin territory, the mind is free of preconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.

Clarice Lispector

#22. Rejoice in every aspect of life - big or small. Let nothing pass you by. Appreciate everything - whether it is perceived as good or bad. You have the power to turn any experience into a pleasurable one. Challenge your preconceptions and luxuriate in the simple things of life.

Jennifer L. Scott

#23. If theater is ritual, then dance is too ... It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.

Paulo Coelho

#24. I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.

Garry Winogrand

#25. To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions; and not to try to avoid what is your lot.

Idries Shah

#26. When you research someone, you actually get beyond your own preconceptions and become aware of the human being other than the image. You become empathetic and sympathetic in turn.

Jim Broadbent

#27. The power of mistakes enables us to reframe creative blocks and turn them around ... The troublesome parts of our work, the parts that are most baffling and frustrating, are in fact the growing edges. We see these opportunities the instant we drop our preconceptions and our self-importance.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

#28. If we had no bias, if we had no preconceptions, what kind of forms could we design?

Michael Hansmeyer

#29. I've told you before. You shouldn't judge people based on appearances and your preconceptions.

Masashi Kishimoto

#30. Due to our preconceptions regarding education, we fail to inquire into the most obvious and wondrous field of study - ourselves.

Mata Amritanandamayi

#31. Puppet camp truly redefined my preconceptions of puppetry ... I'll never forget learning that before a puppet can speak ... he has to inhale. It's those details that make the characters truly come to life.

Rob McClure

#32. All I want is for people to listen to it with unbiased ears, and decide for themselves. I just don't want them to be dictated to by the media, or have preconceptions about it. If you like it, great. If you don't, fair enough.

Melanie Chisholm

#33. People have all these preconceptions about me. Whereas if you look at the roles, Henry Hill was the nicest guy in 'Goodfellas!' I was a nice guy too in the comedy 'Heartbreakers.' And I was a really sweet father to Johnny Depp in 'Blow!'

Ray Liotta

#34. Values and verdicts never bother me half as much as people trying to weasel their way around them, or people compromising their reason to pander to their own prejudices and preconceptions, which they are so rarely competent to look in the face.

Kenny Smith

#35. Losing all the preconceptions that I had about storytelling, about the world, you know, and learning to see the world from a different perspective. It sounds romantic, but it's not an easy process at all.

Ciro Guerra

#36. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.

Walter Lippmann

#37. Specifically, we talked about making the character of the prince not so charming, at least in the beginning, and I'm playing around with the preconceptions attached to a character. That's really what intrigued me as well because I thought it would be fun to do it.

Hugh Dancy

#38. At its best, travel should challenge our preconceptions and most cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit, make us broader minded and more understanding.

Arthur Frommer

#39. If it's Truth we're after, we'll find that we cannot start with any assumptions or concepts whatsoever. Instead, we must approach the world with bare, naked attention, seeing it without any mental bias - without concepts, beliefs, preconceptions, presumptions, or expectations. (6)

Steve Hagen

#40. Traditional photojournalists arrive with an idea of what they are going to produce or what the editor wants. I approach a subject very much as a street photographer and a wanderer, without preconceptions. I try to leave it extremely intuitive and exploratory.

Alex Webb

#41. Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions.

Carl Von Clausewitz

#42. In daily terms, the work of listening is to be constantly worn free of our preconceptions and preferences so that nothing stands in the way of our direct experience of life.

Mark Nepo

#43. Small wonder that we prefer to approach therapy with many rigid preconceptions. We feel we must bring order to it. We can scarcely dare to hope that we can discover order in it.

Carl R. Rogers

#44. In a world of disturbing images, the general body of photography is bland, dealing complacently with nature and treating our preconceptions as insights. Strange, private worlds rarely slip past our guard ...

Henry Holmes Smith

#45. We know great art by its effect on us. If we are prepared to look without preconceptions, without defenses, without haste, then art will change us.

Wendy Beckett

#46. The things we buy and the brands we use are just another way for us to project our preconceptions onto one another.

Tanner Colby

#47. Even sometimes our preconceptions of what we think we need is different to actually what we do need, so we've got to be more open and give guys more of a chance.

Rebecca St. James

#48. Constant reminding ourselves that we not see with our eyes but with our synergetic eye-brain system working as a whole will produce constant astonishment as we notice, more and more often, how much of our perceptions emerge from our preconceptions.

David Eagleman

#49. To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.

Dorothea Lange

#50. It is not wise to judge others based on your own preconceptions and by their appearances.

Masashi Kishimoto

#51. Once you embark on a road of imagination and creating, all bets are off. All preconceptions about what you must do, make, think, assume, and believe are yesterday's news.

Jon Rappoport

#52. Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them - never become even conscious of them all.

C.S. Lewis

#53. In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations that contradict prior beliefs.

Jenny Offill

#54. People are too keen to follow standard preconceptions of how organisations should work. All too often, we feel that we are unable to make changes and so hope that someone, somewhere in your organisation knows what we are doing and what the overall aim is.

Ricardo Semler

#55. In the realm of ideas, it is better to let the mind sally forth, even if some precious preconceptions suffer a mauling.

Robert F. Goheen

#56. Nevertheless, when you did not know what you were looking for, it was important to avoid all prejudices and preconceptions; something that at first sight seemed irrelevant, or even nonsensical, might turn out to be a vital clue.

Arthur C. Clarke

#57. Preconceptions and knowledge really only get you to the edge of where creativity begins. Then intuition and faith take over, hopefully.

Judith Schaechter

#58. The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.

George Gaylord Simpson

#59. Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

#60. You must learn to look at things without preconceptions. Trust nothing.

Koji Suzuki

#61. More than anyone, I am aware of the preconceptions. I was a Spice Girl. I'm married to a footballer.

Victoria Beckham

#62. By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.

William James

#63. The idea of telling a story in reverse destabilises your ordinary moral reactions. That's one of the points of art - to challenge your preconceptions.

Vincent Cassel

#64. We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

Jessamyn West

#65. I, over the years, have always felt more comfortable if I could go into a projection room and look at a film and not really know what to expect. If you read the script first, you form all kinds of preconceptions about how things look, what the location's like, what the actors are like.

John Williams

#66. Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.

Vera Rubin

#67. Nothing is falser than people's preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality.

Petronius

#68. Most people just want to pass quietly in society. No preconceptions, no prejudices.

Leah Raeder

#69. An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.

William James

#70. The first step in becoming a global citizen is stripping away the preconceptions of how things should be in order to see things for what they are.

Colleen Mariotti

#71. I believe one of the most sacrificial acts of love adoptive parents can do is to give up their preconceptions and agendas about what their child's views "should" be and be open to hear the conflicting emotions and thoughts their child often experiences.

Sherrie Eldridge

#72. It's funny when you put music up against picture, and all your preconceptions go away, and you start over. You just realize that that doesn't work at all.

Victor Levin

#73. He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.

George Eliot

#74. The fundamentalists, by 'knowing' the answers before they start, and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science -or any honest intellectual inquiry.

Stephen Jay Gould

#75. With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure.

Art Spiegelman

#76. Any working composer or painter or sculptor will tell you that inspiration comes at the eighth hour of labour rather than as a bolt out of the blue. We have to get our vanities and our preconceptions out of the way and do the work in the time allotted.

John Williams

#77. Most people have this tendency to make judgments on others based on preconceptions, especially when they are dealing with them for the first time.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando

#78. I really like acting in French. It's actually quite different for me, from acting in English. It's fun acting in a foreign language. You're liberated or freed from preconceptions.

Kristin Scott Thomas

#79. People believed what made them comfortable. What fit with their preconceptions of how the world worked.

Robert Ferrigno

#80. We invite you, in reading this book, to cast away your preconceptions and enter, with us, a magical world where all things are connected to you, and you are connected to all things.

Sun Bear

#81. I love a challenge, and I love challenging people's preconceptions.

Owain Yeoman

#82. The intellectual's struggle to deny the obvious is never more desperate than when reality is unpleasant and at variance with his preconceptions and when full acknowledgment of it would undermine the foundations of his intellectual worldview.

Anthony Daniels

#83. Veronika was disconcerted at first and then realized that she had nothing to lose. She was dead; what was the point of continuing to feed the fears or preconceptions that had always limited her life?

Paulo Coelho

#84. But dividing the mind into "biological" and "psychological" is as fallacious as classifying light as a particle or a wave. The natural world makes no promise to align itself with preconceptions that humans find parsimonious or convenient. (167)

Thomas Lewis

#85. If you asked people, "Do you like jazz?" they would be like, "not at all." But I think that if you're really putting yourself out there and really communicating, music can put you beyond people's preconceptions, beyond their playlist.

Kamasi Washington

#86. Real science and real philosophy are not guided by preconceptions of what subjects are important to consider. That

Robert M. Pirsig

#87. Judgments based on preconceptions make life simple for us to deal with since that means we safely shield ourselves behind barriers of preconception that helped us feel safe in whatever views or assumptions we are having.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando

#88. I hope I helped change people's preconceptions about 'Page 3' girls by appearing on Newsnight and at the Oxford Union debate.

Peta Todd

#89. I would like the work to be non-work. This means that it would find its way beyond my preconceptions ... It is the unknown quantity from which and where I want to go. As a thing, an object, it accedes to its non-logical self. It is something, it is nothing.

Eva Hesse

#90. Now, Benny was no eejit. He wasn't expecting the Tunisian nationals to be Irish. What he did expect was darkish people with Irishy personalities.
That was not what he got.
The Tunisians weren't interested in conforming to Benny's preconceptions. They stubbornly insisted on being themselves.

Eoin Colfer

#91. Like this gas tank, you are overflowing with preconceptions, full of useless knowledge. You hold many facts and opinions, yet know little of yourself. Before you can learn, you'll have to first empty your tank.

Dan Millman

#92. Party politics is nothing more than the collision of mass preconceptions.

Steve Merrick

#93. As John Reader understatedly observes in the book Missing Links, "It is remarkable how often the first interpretations of new evidence have confirmed the preconceptions of its discoverer." All

Bill Bryson

#94. In dealing with others, man is inherently a slave to his preconceptions, to the stereotypes he became familiar with that made life easier for him to comprehend.

Janvier Chouteu-Chando

#95. In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don't.

Thomas Sowell

#96. You must surrender whatever preconceptions you have about music if you're really interested in it.

Cecil Taylor

#97. Was attraction and repulsion all a matter of appearances? Or preconceptions?

L.E. Modesitt Jr.

#98. Too often cartoonists just look at other cartoonists and, after a lot of inbreeding, everyone has the same funny look. The challenge of drawing is that there is no one right way to visually describe something. It's a good thing to confront your limitations and preconceptions every so often.

Bill Watterson

#99. People have preconceptions about women of a certain age.

Lesley Nicol

#100. If you want to make the most of travel to Russia, it is better to leave tight plans and preconceptions behind and just enjoy the journey.

Tim Cope