Mason Cooley Quotes

Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.

It is worse to be irresolute than to be wrong.

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

It is... easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

There is a line between a definite maybe and an indefinite yes.

I don't know, and I would rather not guess.

Certitude is not the test of certainty.

I don't feel real confident expressing myself except when I'm writing. I feel kind of scatterbrained. I can see everything from both sides and that makes it hard to reach conclusions. Writing enables me to clarify things.

There's a gray area there that I'm satisfied is not gray.

You aren't sure if you're making the right decision - about anything, ever.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.

I was disappointed a little in Stevenson because I did think he couldn't make up his mind. It's the feeling I always had. Perhaps all of us have self-doubt, and we should have, and most of us do, but it doesn't show. It doesn't show as much as it did in Adlai; he seemed to do it in public.

I can be indecisive about things - and the less important something is, the more indecisive I am.

There wasn't a time where I felt fearful that I couldn't make the best decisions possible.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.

The Public ... demands certainties ... But there are not certainties

When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?

What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth.

I'm starting to mistrust my judgment.

[I want] a one-armed scientist ... [Who would not qualify his advice with 'on the other hand...']

True' and 'false' are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision. Truth is something without end.