Jon Krakauer Quotes

I think you need to have a healthy sense of doubt because I think doubt leads to inquiry.

Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

My only weapon is the question.

My skepticism is strong, but my curiosity is stronger.

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew.

a question has the most power before we rush to answer it, when it is still making us think, still testing us.

Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.

O my body, make of me always a man who questions!

What is "this drive"? It's the tendency to not simply accept things as they are but to want to think about them, to understand them. To not be content to simply feel sad but to ask what sadness means. To not just get a bus pass but to think about the economic reasons getting a bus pass makes sense. I call this tendency the intellectual.

Great intellects are skeptical.

He that never thinks can never be wise.

Assume nothing, question everything.

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

I not only think but also look and study things carefully. When I travel around, I look at things carefully, make comparisons of what I see. I don't accept things at face value, you cannot trust what you hear or see. Don't jump to conclusions without thinking.

As an educator, I try to get people to be fundamentally curious and to question ideas that they might have or that are shared by others. In that state of mind, they have earned a kind of inoculation against the fuzzy thinking of these weird ideas floating around out there. So rather than correct the weird ideas, I would rather them to know how to think in the first place. Then they can correct the weird idea themselves.

Truth suffers from too much analysis.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

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.

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

The best books are the ones that ask the most questions.

I love to doubt as well as know.