I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right. – Henry Bessemer (discovered new method of producing steel)

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or that our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than we suspect of what we think. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. – Bernard Berenson, Notebook, 1892