Quotes About Doubt

I worry about "true believers" who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Mother Teresa learned to do. People who are so certain always seem like Hamlet's

I worry about "true believers" who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Mother Teresa learned to do.

Wisdom happily lives with mystery, doubt, and "unknowing," and in such living, ironically resolves that very mystery to some degree.

Jesus is not telling us to believe unbelievable things, as if that would somehow please God. He is much more saying to us, "Try this," and you will see for yourself that it is true. But that initial trying is always a leap of faith into some kind of action or practice.

Religious energy is in the dark questions, seldom in the answers.

To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable.

Great spiritual teachers learn to balance knowing with not knowing, as illustrated in this oft-quoted aphorism: It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time--when the truth is the exact opposite. But we have little theology of darkness today.

Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it. This is perhaps our major stumbling stone

For postmodern people, the universe is not inherently enchanted, as it was for the ancients. We have to do all the "enchanting" ourselves. This leaves us alone, confused, and doubtful. There is no meaning already in place for our discovery and enjoyment.

What made us think we were

To those who cling to Anselm's understanding, I would say, as J. B. Phillips wrote many years ago, "Your God is too small.

Most get little reassurance from others, or even have full confidence that they are totally right. Setting out is always a leap of faith, a risk in the deepest sense of the term, and yet an adventure too.

The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is control. You must leave the Garden, where there are angels with flaming swords to keep you from ever really returning. You must leave the womb to be born.

Interesting, Miles thought. Like himself, Father Mark, as a child, had been reassured by the imagined proximity of God, whereas adults, perhaps because they so often were up to no good, took more comfort from His remoteness.

For years now he'd believed he had no further urgent business with this world, or it with him. But it could be he was wrong.

Perhaps he was frightened by the sheer prospect of matrimony, of marrying a girl he would one day want to murder.

My afternoon comp class is not persuaded. In fact, they feel ill-treated...I've read three short essays aloud, anonymously, for the purpose of inspiring discussion or, failing discussion, private misgiving. It's my hope that if the majority of these intellectually addled young folk actually hear their words aloud, if they are forced to digest not only their advice to me but the logic that led to this advice, they will, if not change their minds, at least become acquainted with doubt.

Maybe, as the old lady had suggested, it was all that catechism, its rote insistence on subordinating one's will to God's, so many of these lessons administered by the now senile priest who was seated a few yards away and giving him the evil eye. What in the world could these old goats have been discussing, Miles wondered.

A silly lie. A lie so small and to so little purpose that it suggested to Miles a way of life, a strategy for confronting the world, and this was further reason—if any was needed—to doubt the truth of everything the man had said inside.

His mother's position was that his father could come back and live with them again as soon as he grew up, but not until. His father had predicted that his mother would kiss his ass before he'd ever walk through that door again. Both of these, Lin had concluded, were highly unlikely events.

Indeed, a good hint that you've entered the realm of Art is that you immediately feel like giving up.

Nothing is so certain as that which is certain after doubts. Shaking settles and roots.

I was seized by doubt. Should I have come here? But going back was impossible. I had fled a known terror, and perhaps I could cope with this unknown terror that lay ahead.

You're trying to believe in yourself. And every time you try to find a way to live, your own mind stands in the way. You know why that is? It's because others have said you were bad and they made you live in bad conditions. When a man hears that over and over and looks about him and sees that his life is bad, he begins to doubt his own mind. His feelings drag him forward and his mind, full of what others say about him, tells him to go back