Michel de Montaigne Quotes

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

It's not like I have all the answers.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

Doubt is not below knowledge, but above it.

Who knows most, doubts most.

Do not feel certain of anything.

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

The worst thing is not being wrong, but being sure one is not wrong.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

To me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet. That I haven’t understood enough. That I can’t know enough. That I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom… Those who tell you that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority: don’t think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poison chalice. Push it aside, however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

We'd all like to be certain of what we know, but I think the most important question is to ask yourself do you really know what you know?

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.

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

We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, at last, make others take us seriously.

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.

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