Margo Jefferson Quotes

The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.

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 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.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

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.

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.

What is important is that one utilizes one's intellect and not to be 100 percent sure about one's convictions. One should always leave room for doubt.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

If you can get really good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift.

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

Intellectual modesty is humility as to what I know; intellectual humility is modesty as to what I do not know

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

We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.

I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It.

Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.

Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.

I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun.

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

The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.

In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself.

A mind that doesn't question its judgements, makes the world very small and dangerous.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.