Marcus Aurelius Quotes

Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

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

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that are not so

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

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?

'Belief' means something that you do not know. You want to assume and bring a certainty to something that you do not know. That means you are concretising your ignorance. There is no need to believe anything.

But is all this true?" said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork." "You mean you don't KNOW it's true?" said Brutha. "I THINK it might be," said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

No one is infallible, and no one can claim a monopoly on truth or virtue. It would be contradictory for skepticism to seek to translate itself into a new faith.

I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

... I distrust manifest knowledge.

He who replies to words of doubt doth put the light of knowledge out.

We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong.

No one knows anything for sure.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

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

Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth.

Truth is something that we can attempt to doubt, and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover that part of the doubt is not justified.

I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.

He who doubts, knows - knows as much as can be known.

I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

I have throughout been curious about how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.

...skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground.