H. G. Wells Quotes

I think the appropriate kind of skepticism is this: you've got to be asking questions all the time, you've also got to make sure that you're doing so in the spirit of genuinely wanting to find the answers - and that also means being open. I battle with this: I know I tend to be very skeptical and as a result, I veer towards the dismissive. But being aware of the tendency, I like to challenge my own skepticism and make sure it's not just knee-jerk. You need to be skeptical towards yourself as well. When you're only skeptical outwards you've got an unbalanced skepticism.

The intellectual, the man of thought, doubt and analysis, should give the best of himself.

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

Those questions - when you think about a thought, when you're believing a thought or concept and you question it - you realize that it changes things. Every cell in your body is awake with inquiry.

The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.

Clarity and consistency are not enough: the quest for truth requires humility and effort.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

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. To say you've got to inquire, you've got to be testing your knowledge all the time in order to be more effective in what you're doing.

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.

Thinking no longer means anymore than checking at each moment whether one can indeed think.

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

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

Who knows most, doubts most.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.

I see myself as an avatar of curiosity and doubt.

By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth.

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.

A matter that becomes clear ceases to concern us.--What was that god thinking who counseled, "Know thyself!" Did he perhaps mean,"Cease to concern yourself! Become objective!"--And Socrates?--And "scientific men"?

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.

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.

Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.

But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.

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