Malcolm Muggeridge Quotes

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

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

There are only two things one has to bear in mind. One has to be credulous - able to believe - and skeptical - able to not believe, because if you are not skeptical, you will believe rubbish. If you are not credulous you will learn nothing and the only way to balance those two is to recognize the mystery of things.

Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.

There is no faith, without a critical mind

Intelligent people simply aren’t willing to accept answers that they don’t understand — no matter how many other people try to convince them of it, or how many other people believe it, if they aren’t able to convince them selves of it, they won’t accept it.

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods.

The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.

The critical mind is the creative mind.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.

With knowledge comes more doubt.

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

Skepticism is not a position; it's a process.

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.

There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out.

Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.

What is desperately needed... is the skepticism and the sense of history that a liberal arts education provides.

The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.

In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.

The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.