Giordano Bruno Quotes

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.

Do not believe a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.

Do not believe the truth. The truth is tiny compared to what you have to do.

If you tell me that the sky is red, I will look up.

I think what's always important is not to be contrarian for its own sake but to really get at the truth.

I'd rather see folks doubt what's true than accept what isn't.

The inquiry, knowledge, and belief of truth is the sovereign good of human nature.

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?

The habit of an opinion often leads to the complete conviction of its truth, it hides the weaker parts of it, and makes us incapable of accepting the proofs against it.

Seek the company of those who are looking for the truth, but run from those who have found it.

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.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.

He that believes all misseth; he that believes nothing, hits not.

As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth - hear both sides and believe neither.

I don't believe anything unless I understand it inside out. And even if I understand something, it is not uncommon that I disagree with accepted view (even if it's a Nobel laureate).

As for the search for truth, I know from my own painful searching, with its many blind alleys, how hard it is to take a reliable step, be it ever so small, towards the understanding of that which is truly significant.

It’s critical that we know what we believe, no matter what we feel...that we know what is true, no matter what we see.

True belief is not about blind submission. It is about open-eyed acceptance, and acceptance requires persistent distance from the truth, and that distance is doubt. Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it. And it forces us, even while believing, to recognize our fundamental duty with respect to God's truth: humility. We do not know. Which is why we believe.