David Foster Wallace Quotes

Do not engage to find things as you think they are.

You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions.

It's sad that we never get trained to leave assumptions behind.

You will never succeed in getting at the truth if you know, ahead of time, what the truth ought to be

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

In order to practice dialogue, you need to be able to set aside your assumptions and try to listen more than you want to talk. It's not always politically correct to be able to do that, but it can give you a better sense of the reality.

Some people have facts; these can be proven. Some people have theories; these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it.

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth". To be an atheist is almost as arrogant as to be a fundamentalist. But then again, I can get pretty arrogant.

Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.

I do think it's important not to be absolutely sure, so sure that you can't reinvent yourself in some way, or at least rediscover the truth of why you think what you think, and not just take it as an assumption.

Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.

Never presume that just because you disagree with an idea that you must be correct.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

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.

With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.

Assumptions are dangerous things. I like facts a lot better.

Don't hold strong opinions about things you don't truly understand.

I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun.

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

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in. If you challenge your own, you won't be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others. You'll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

See what you see, not what someone tells you that you see

There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.