Rita Mae Brown Quotes

All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

If all you have is faith, then you never actually know anything.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.' It's that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can't present it as fact.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

We'd all like to be certain of what we know, but I think the most important question is to ask yourself do you really know what you know?

'Belief' means something that you do not know. You want to assume and bring a certainty to something that you do not know. That means you are concretising your ignorance. There is no need to believe anything.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

Truth is something that we can attempt to doubt, and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover that part of the doubt is not justified.

I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.

Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.

He who doubts, knows - knows as much as can be known.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.