Quotes About Doubt

I don't teach writing. I teach patience. Toughness. Stubbornness. The willingness to fail. I teach the life. The odd thing is most of the things that stop an inexperienced writer are so far from the truth as to be nearly beside the point. When you feel glosbal doubt about your talent, that is your talent. People who have no talent don't have any doubt.

I guess some people lived like Reader's Digest, but I hadn't met any and at that time it seemed doubtful that I ever would

It's pretty hard to have faith when everybody is trying to lock you up.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Religion teaches you to be satisfied with nonanswers. It's a sort of crime against childhood.

Religious faith, is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, it doesn't matter what, without a whisper of doubt, or a whiff of evidence, and believe so strongly in some cases, that they are prepare to kill and die for it, without the need for further justification.

The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence … The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held to us as worthy of imitation.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact...That didn't have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn't. It didn't have to be true, but it is....Evolution is the only game in town, the greatest show on earth.

Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anyone who doubts it is invited to jump out a tenth-storey window.

Shouldn't children be taught critical, sceptical thinking from an early age? Shouldn't we all be taught to doubt, to weigh up plausibility, to demand evidence?

There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

I prefer to say that I believe in people, and people, when given the right encouragement to think for themselves about all the information now available, very often turn out not to believe in God and to lead fulfilled and satisfied—indeed, liberated—lives.

The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing.

Next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument.

These beliefs contradict each other, so they can't be all right

There are so many different faiths. How do you know the holy book you have been brought up with is the true one? And if all the others are wrong, what makes you think your holy book isn't wrong too?

on page 96 of my hero Peter Medawar's book The Limits of Science: 'I regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it were possible to discover good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God.

uno de los efectos auténticamente perniciosos de la religión es que enseña que estar satisfecho con el desconocimiento es una virtud.

you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.

But how can there be a perversion of faith, if faith, lacking objective justification, doesn't have any demonstrable standard to pervert.

But there is also a deeply inescapable kind of fence-sitting, which I shall call PAP (Permanent Agnosticism in Principle).

Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth.

Martin Luther was well aware that reason was religion's arch-enemy, and he frequently warned of its dangers: 'Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.'84 Again: 'Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason.' And again: 'Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.