Jane Jacobs Quotes

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your beliefs.

Never assume the obvious is true.

I like to go after the foibles, basically of beliefs that are held without question. If people still want to believe in their stuff after that, that's great - as long as they just have a chance to step back and look at it for a second. Sometimes, you don't even realize what you've been thinking for 20 years.

One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.

No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.

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

To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin;

Skepticism is the lifeblood of scientific progress. By constantly asking whether there is a different answer, a better approach or an alternative view, scientists drive improvements and innovations that ultimately benefit everyone. It is not “antiscience” to be skeptical—it’s definitively pro-science.

The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.

Never take advice, including this.

Don't accuse anyone with the temerity to question your sad supernatural fantasies of having a 'closed mind' or being 'blind to possibilities'. A closed mind asks no questions, unthinkingly accepting that which it wants to believe. The blindness is all yours.

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

There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic.

Always be suspicious of conclusions that reinforce uncritical hope and follow comforting traditions of Western thought.

You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.

Never believe what you cannot doubt.

I don't want you to trust me, I want you to question everything I say.

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.

I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.

Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.

Questioning is the piety of thought.

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.