James McBride Quotes

I question everything I do.

I think everyone has questions in their mind. Did they do their very best?

I think that there's some confusion in my own mind about what I believe.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.

The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.

As Socrates I believe said the unexamined life is not worth living. I believe that's true. I do believe that.

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.

It's funny because sometimes one doesn't actually consider these things for one's self until one's in a situation like this press conferece where one has to kind of think about it.

Education best serves students by helping them be more self-reflective.

The thing I believe in most in the world is my own fallibility, so I am willing to believe that I may be wrong too.

If one does not reflect, one thinks oneself master of everything; but when one does reflect, one realizes that one is master of nothing.

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.

This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better, that's part of what makes us Americans. It's part of what sets us apart from other nations, the United States is the most professional, most capable, most cutting-edge intelligence community in the world.

Sometimes I have that kind of critical mind to myself as well. This is because there are times where I have to do things that I don't wish to.

The value of a story isn't that it just has a narcotic effect. It's that it awakens something in you that makes you want to think, that makes you talk to other people, that stirs something that makes you examine the story that eventually turns into self-examination.

There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.

Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted.

What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.

I wish I had been more self-aware earlier, but I think that just comes with age.

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.

Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?

'What am I missing?' is a much more important question than 'How cool am I?'

I try not to be overly analytical.