Denis Diderot Quotes

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.

Skepticism is the first step towards truth.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.

I don't like accepting things at face value.

By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth.

So often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,--at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body; andif a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for itI'll go to the world's end with him:MBut I hate disputes.

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.

It is by doubting that we come to investigate, and by investigating that we recognize the truth.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

What do we believe? Why do we believe it?

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

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.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

Socrates was executed … not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.

Question everything!

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.

My only weapon is the question.