Quotes About Doubt

He couldn't deny the hole he was in, but could the uppity young miss who kept his head spinning be the answer he was looking for?

Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.

Extreme orthodoxy betrays by its very frenzy that the poison of skepticism has entered the soul of the church; for men insist most vehemently upon their certainties when their hold upon them has been shaken. Frantic orthodoxy is a method for obscuring doubt.

Men insist most vehemently upon their certainties when their hold upon them has been shaken.

Asking yourself a question, that's how resistance begins. And then ask that very question to someone else.

I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.

I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.

The dreams we imagine when we are asleep should not in any way make us doubt the truth of the thoughts we have when we are awake.

For the very fact that my knowledge is increasing little by little is the most certain argument for its imperfection.

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

When it is not in our power to determine what it true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

The very desire to seek the truth often causes people, who do not know how it should be sought correctly, to make judgements about things that they do not perceive and in that way they make mistakes.

I am not a collection of members which we call the human body: I am not a subtle air distributed through these members, I am not a wind, a fire, a vapour, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive; because I have assumed that all these were nothing. Without changing that supposition I find that I only leave myself certain of the fact that I am somewhat.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt

Like a prisoner who dreams that he is free, starts to suspect that it is merely a dream, and wants to go on dreaming rather than waking up, so I am content to slide back into my old opinions; I fear being shaken out of them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labour when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised.

By intuition I mean, not the wavering assurance of the senses, or the deceitful judgment of a misconstructed imagination, but a conception, formed by unclouded mental attention, so easy and distinct as to leave no room for doubt in regard to the thing we are understanding.

I will follow this strategy until I discover something that is certain or, at least, until I discover that it is certain only that nothing is certain.

Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects?

But as soon as I had finished my course of study, at which time it is usual to be admitted to the ranks of the well educated, I completely changed my opinion, for I found myself bogged down in so many doubts and errors, that it seemed to me that having set out to become learned, I had derived no benefit from my studies, other than that of progressively revealing to myself how ignorant I was.

If I find some reason for doubt in each of my beliefs, that will be enough to reject all of them.

Je puis me persuader d'avoir été fait tel par la nature que je puisse aisément me tromper même dans les choses que je crois comprendre avec le plus d'évidence et de certitude.

One needs to know what thought is, what existence is and what certainty is.

we ought also to consider as false all that is doubtful.