Shelley Berman Quotes

The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.

My only weapon is the question.

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

I learned to question everything you read. Don't take anything at face value. Don't care what other people say. I liked that philosophy.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

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.

Some people spend their time reasoning and thinking out everything, and so anything that cannot be fully understood, they will not accept. We call these people 'intellectuals.'

An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with explanation, with conclusions. Nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion.

The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

Great intellects are skeptical.

Questioning is the piety of thought.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.

To philosophize is to doubt.

In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.

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

Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.

Philosophy has to be enquiring; it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument.

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

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.