Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

In philosophy you're never 100% sure. You're always undermining what you think you know. That's always been my philosophy and my intellectual ethos.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

I love to doubt as well as know.

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

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.

Doubting pleases me no less than knowing

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

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

He believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing.

At the very smallest wheel of our reasoning it is possible for a handful of questions to break the bank of our answers.

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

Not all questions are answered, but fortunately some answers are questioned.

Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.

This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"

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.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Because a truly skeptical position would be a very uncertain one.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

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.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

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.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.

My only weapon is the question.

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?