Will Durant Quotes

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.

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

To believe with certainty, we must begin with doubting.

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 am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath.

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

Never believe what you cannot doubt.

Questioning is the piety of thought.

To philosophize is to doubt.

The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

Because a truly skeptical position would be a very uncertain one.

Socrates was executed … not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.

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

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.

Skepticism is the lifeblood of scientific progress. By constantly asking whether there is a different answer, a better approach or an alternative view, scientists drive improvements and innovations that ultimately benefit everyone. It is not “antiscience” to be skeptical—it’s definitively pro-science.

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

It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly.

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

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

Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.