Marquis de Lafayette Quotes

I pick and choose my battles, but I overthink everything because I have to think about everything.

Philosophers, as things now stand, are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within.

If you're not riddled with doubt, you've probably done something wrong.

I have opinions of my own—strong opinions—but I don’t always agree with them.

I couldn't be Susan Sontag. I'm not very good with abstract thought. I always just take to the emotional core of me.

The older I get, the more I have to think long and hard about what I need to say and why.

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

The less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs.

Something that I tell myself every morning when I wake up is like: "Think it over, take the time to think it over." I don't like spontaneity, there you go. I'm wary of it.

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.

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become; and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do so.

Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.

Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.

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

Continually challenge and be willing to amend your best loved ideas.

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to distance ourselves from our own views, so that we can dispassionately search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.

One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.

The point here is ... to be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?

The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

A famous bon mot asserts that opinions are like arse-holes, in that everyone has one. There is great wisdom in this... but I would add that opinions differ significantly from arse-holes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined.We must think critically, and not just about the ideas of others. Be hard on your beliefs. Take them out onto the verandah and beat them with a cricket bat.... Be intellectually rigorous. Identify your biases, your prejudices, your privilege.

Without reflection, we go blindly on our way.

This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.