Dalai Lama Quotes

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.

Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it.

General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

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.

Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.

My skepticism is strong, but my curiosity is stronger.

Question everything. Your love, your religion, your passion. If you don't have questions, you'll never find answers.

I say with my own authority that if you go on questioning without accepting anybody's answer, including mine, by and by you will find that the answer is not found but the question disappears.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.

Assume nothing, question everything.

Unless you have the courage to doubt you will never come to know the truth.

First doubt, then inquire, then discover. This has been the process with all our great thinkers.

I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth. We need to be taught to study rather than believe, to inquire rather than to affirm.

To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

Doubt . . . impels a search for the truth. It opens the door to knowledge. Faith puts a lock on the door. Indeed, . . . faith anesthetizes the desire to seek knowledge and truth.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

'UFO's' attitude toward the subject is very similar to mine. It's not an advocacy; its philosophy is more 'I want to believe this, but I want it proved.'