Quotes About Flexibility

The value of books is proportionate to what may be called their plasticity -- their quality of being all things to all men, of being diversely moulded by the impact of fresh forms of thought.

Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

He had never seen anyone pack as cleverly as Susy: the way she coaxed reluctant things into a trunk was a symbol of the way she fitted discordant facts into her life.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

Real life, however, is very different from school sums. There is usually more than one answer. Some answers are much better than others: they cost less, are more reliable or are more easy to implement. There is no reason at all for supposing that the first answer has to be the best one.

A person who knows all the answers, has an opinion on everything, has a certainty backed up by rational argument, has very little possibility of further progress. Such a person is unlikely to walk away from a discussion with anything more than a reaffirmation of how right he or she has been all along.

Lateral thinking has very much to do with perception. In lateral thinking we seek to put forward different views. All are correct and all can coexist. The different views are not derived each from the other but are independently produced. In this sense lateral thinking has to do with exploration just as perception has to do with exploration.

A man does not learn very well, Mr. Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming.

We have to deal with the world as it is, not as it should be," he would gently point out.

Sometimes you take detours to get where you need to go.

Life was indeed a continuous lesson in finding ways to be less troubled by certain things, so that we might make room for new concerns, which arrived with the promptness and regularity of mail coaches.

I wished that adults were as capable as children of moving beyond some impasse, letting go of whatever had been intractable only hours or days ago. I envied them that ability to discard their past selves as if they were old, tattered, useless skins.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend they shall never be broken.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Student: Dr. Einstein, Aren't these the same questions as last year's [physics] final exam? Dr. Einstein: Yes; But this year the answers are different.

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

De la misma forma que una barra de hierro sometida a una llamapersistente se ablanda y dobla, sentía entonces que el metal de mi ánimo era gradualmenteablandado y doblado por las angustias que lo oprimían.

Failure doesn't exist. It's only a change of direction.

If you live long enough, you learn that nothing has ever been, nor will it ever be, the way it used to be.

it is important that we enter the interview with a great degree of flexibility, ready not only to accept the narrator's agenda but also to modify our own.

Normal is all relative.

no one is ever ready for anything

His mentor, Master Kung always used to tell him about the importance of warm up. He used to say, "Steve, if you don't warm up, your body will become rigid and you will become slow. Never miss out on your warm-ups." Jeffery