Quotes About Doubt

Imagine, more precisely, that you are so afraid that you will not allow yourself even to know what you want. Knowing would simultaneously mean hoping, and your hopes have been dashed. You have your reasons for maintaining your ignorance. You are afraid, perhaps, that there is nothing worth wanting;

Human beings have a great capacity for wrongdoing. It's an attribute that is unique in the world of life. We can and do make things worse, voluntarily, with full knowledge of what we are doing (as well as accidentally, and carelessly, and in a manner that is willfully blind). Given that terrible capacity, that proclivity for malevolent actions, is it any wonder we have a hard time taking care of ourselves, or others—or even that we doubt the value of the entire human enterprise?

What you hear in the forest but cannot see might be a tiger. It might even be a conspiracy of tigers, each hungrier and more vicious than the other, led by a crocodile. But it might not be, too. If you turn and look, perhaps you'll see that it's just a squirrel.

that is, the doubt that doubt itself is an ultimately reliable guide) objects: the worst decision of all is none.

Failing to look under the bed when you strongly suspect a monster is lurking there is not an advisable strategy.

Almost all ideas are wrong. It doesn't matter if they are your ideas or someone else's ideas. Your job is to assume that they are probably wrong, and then to assault them with every thing you have in your arsenal, and see if they can survive.

Everywhere, the cynic despairs, are bad decisions. But someone who has transcended that cynicism (or more accurately, replaced it with an even more profound doubt—that is, the doubt that doubt itself is an ultimately reliable guide) objects: the worst decision of all is none.

You see, at the end of the day, objections are merely smoke screens for uncertainty for one or all of the Three Tens.

I rolled up my sleeve. Penned on my arm in my own writing: If I prove I'm not selfish, Daniel will love me.

A reasonable person believes, in short, that each of his beliefs is true and that some of them are false.

When you reason correctly, as Silver does, you find that you always think you're right, but you don't think you're always right.

Math gives us a way of being unsure in a principled way: not just throwing up our hands and saying "huh," but rather making a firm assertion: "I'm not sure, this is why I'm not sure, and this is roughly how not-sure I am." Or even more: "I'm unsure, and you should be too.

anything is possible but probably not that

Uno de los problemas de hoy es que los necios y los fanáticos están siempre seguros de sí mismos, mientras que los sabios están llenos de dudas.

Tengo la razón, la tengo siempre, y estoy equivocada.

I have known that thing the Greeks knew not uncertainty.

The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy.

I have known what the Greeks did not: uncertainty.

May it please Heaven that his example shall continue to serve as a beacon to our Republics in their darkest moments of doubt and adversity.

Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.

The waves of human mediocrity rise to the sky and they will engulf the refuge whose dams I open. Ah! courage leaves me, my heart breaks! O Lord, pity the Christian who doubts, the sceptic who would believe, the convict of life embarking alone in the night, under a sky no longer illumined by the consoling beacons of ancient faith.

Seigneur, prenez pitié du chrétien qui doute, de l'incrédule qui voudrait croire, du forçat de la vie qui s'embarque seul, dans la nuit, sous un firmament que n'éclairent plus les consolants fanaux du vieil espoir !

Yo no entiendo, Madre Benita, cómo usted puede seguir creyendo en un Dios mezquino que fabricó tan pocas máscaras, somos tantos los que nos quedamos recogiendo de aquí y de allá cualquier desperdicio con que disfrazarnos para tener la sensación de que somos alguien (...)

Nu încape nici o îndoial?,ÅŸi respingerea poate fi umbra unei mângâieri.