Paul Kurtz Quotes

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.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.

I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It.

Start out understanding religion by saying everything is possibly wrong... As soon as you do that, you start sliding down an edge which is hard to recover from.

It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)

When you cannot answer a skeptic, be content to wait for more light; but never forsake a great principle.

Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

The main battle is to make people realise that doubt is important. Doubt is good. The 'don't know' answer sometimes is the box you should tick, and it's about not being scared about that fact. Even the greatest minds don't know everything.

Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.

The older I get, the less I know. By that I mean the less I am sure of. I view people with strong opinions on the big stuff with distrust. I don't think we should have certain certainties on faith and politics; I think we should be open-minded.

What is important is that one utilizes one's intellect and not to be 100 percent sure about one's convictions. One should always leave room for doubt.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

I always admired Niels Bohr for uttering his opinions like one perpetually groping and never like one in the possession of definite truth.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

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

Do not feel certain of anything.

It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""

Intellectual modesty is humility as to what I know; intellectual humility is modesty as to what I do not know

We never are definitely right, we can only be sure we are wrong.

Only the fools are certain and assured.

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.

We don't need to invest all of our faith in every concept, in every symbol, in every opinion that forms the totality of our knowledge. Faith means to believe in something 100% without a doubt, and to doubt our own knowledge can seem like the most frightening thing that can happen to us.

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.