William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.

In their leaders, advisers, and experts, people much prefer overconfidence, total certainty, to any kind of doubt.

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

When I make a decision, I never am wrong, and I seldom have doubts.

Obstinacy and dogmatism are the surest signs of stupidity. Is there anything more confident, resolute, disdainful, grave and serious than an ass?

What blows me away most is how sure people are of themselves.

And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts... Save us all from arrogant men, and all the causes they're for.

If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.

He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.

When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.

They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.

I do not think that I am ever overconfident. I am merely wholly confident, and I maintain that there is all the difference in the world there.

A narrow mind and a fat head invariably come on the same person.

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

Doubt is long-winded. Certainty is brief.

The losers in life think they have all the answers. They can’t learn because they’re too busy telling everyone what they know.

Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty.

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I'm right.

Young people are so infernally convinced that they are absolutely right about everything.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

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

To have great faith is to have great power, because your intent, your will, is undivided. When your word isn't dissipated by doubt, the power of your word becomes even stronger.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.