Quotes About Doubt

We can never know anything.

The truly terrible thing about this life, was not knowing what you want, but only able to recognize what you do not want. You have to spend so much time and energy trying to find it out, time that other people spent in pursuing of their desires.

If a man doubts everything, then he will attempt nothing. The strong men of this world are the ones who are always certain of their own rightness.

Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, a word in your ear. Study your wife closely, for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your good lady doesn't exhibit something in the shape of a contradiction in that time, Heaven help you!--you have married a monster.

We often hear, almost invariably, however, from superficial observers, that guilt can look like innocence. I believe it to be infinitely the truer axiom of the two that innocence can look like guilt.

It is quite possible that I may be altogether wrong in this idea. My own impression, however, is, that I am right.

The only hope I have left for you hangs on a great doubt - the doubt whether we are, or are not, the masters of our own destinies. It may be that mortal free-will can conquer mortal fate; and that going, as we all do, inevitably to death, we go inevitably to nothing that is before death.

Not the shadow of a doubt crossed my mind of the purpose for which the Count had left the theatre. His escape from us, that evening, was beyond all question the preliminary only to his escape from London. The mark of the Brotherhood was on his arm—I felt as certain of it as if he had shown me the brand; and the betrayal of the Brotherhood was on his conscience—I had seen it in his recognition of Pesca.

Here I am, with my book and my pencil - the latter not pointed so well as I could wish, but when Christians take leave of their senses, who is to expect that pencils will keep their points?

Don't doubt my courage, Walter, it's my weakness that cries, not me.

I began to doubt whether she might not be repenting of her engagement—just as young ladies often do, when repentance comes too late. On

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous. Plato

By 1911 I found it impossible to continue my pretenses to orthodoxy;

It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

These steeples, everywhere pointing upward, ignoring despair and lifting hope--these lofty city spires or simple chapels in the hills--they rise at every step from the earth to the sky; in every village of every nation on the globe they challenge doubt and invite weary hearts to consolation. Is it all a vain delusion? Is there nothing beyond life but death, and nothing beyond death but decay? We cannot know, but as long as men suffer, those steeples will remain

Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

But something of the skepticism that injured my religious faith has overflowed into timid doubts of science

The cleverest defenders of a faith are its greatest enemies; for their subtleties engender doubt and stimulate the mind.

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought? There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. Gnothi seauton, said Socrates: Know thyself.

Philosophy begins when one doubts one's own beliefs, dogmas, and axioms

Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.

The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women."59 "It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing, Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt - particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought? There is no philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself. Gnothi seauton, said Socrates: Know thyself.