Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

I believe that, too, it's hard to believe that anybody could not believe that.

Must faith be exactly that, the willingness and ability to believe in the face of a lack of evidence? If one could find the evidence, would then the faith be dead?

What do we believe? Why do we believe it?

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

All I can say is what I believe.

Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

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.

Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.

For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it's there it doesn't require your belief- and if it's not there why should you believe in it?

Knowing is higher than believing. Knowing means that there is NO doubt.

Carl did not want to believe. He wanted to know.

It’s critical that we know what we believe, no matter what we feel...that we know what is true, no matter what we see.

True belief is not about blind submission. It is about open-eyed acceptance, and acceptance requires persistent distance from the truth, and that distance is doubt. Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it. And it forces us, even while believing, to recognize our fundamental duty with respect to God's truth: humility. We do not know. Which is why we believe.

Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people have got to have their faith rewarded.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.

I hate doubt, yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worth believing in.

You do not believe, you only believe that you believe.

If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.