#preconceptions

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

— Vera Rubin

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#best #force #observations #our #preconceptions

She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. ↗

— Jane Austen

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#clichés #concealment #empowerment #feminism #ignorance

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

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#expectations #open-mindedness #preconceptions #reading #biography