Margo Jefferson Quotes

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

I always entertain the notion that I'm wrong, or that I'll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

I'm not one of these people who thinks I know all the answers.

I think it's very important to keep in the back of your mind: 'What if I'm wrong?'

"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken." I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every courthouse, and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States. I should like to have every court begin, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that we may be mistaken."

The thing I believe in most in the world is my own fallibility, so I am willing to believe that I may be wrong too.

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

I don't pretend I know everything.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

If I had a worldview, and I don't know if I do, but if I did, it's one that's intensely humanistic.

I do not know it all and do not claim to.

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right

Even criticism is more interesting when the writer's authority does not only come through this omniscient narrator, but through questions, ambivalence, vulnerability. A mind questioning and on the move, not just settling down and declaring - that's one of the most interesting possibilities.

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.

I'd ask people to keep in mind the idea that if you really understand something, it's even more important for you to consider the possibility of your wrongness. Even if it takes someone dumber than you to point that out.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

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

I doubt about myself. I think doubts are good in life. The people who don't have doubts I think only two things-arrogance or not intelligence.

If you haven't doubted, you probably haven't thought very hard about what you believe.

A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.

The worst thing is not being wrong, but being sure one is not wrong.

A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.