Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.

Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it.

To doubt has more of faith ... than that blank negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting trotters.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

I love to doubt as well as 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 say with my own authority that if you go on questioning without accepting anybody's answer, including mine, by and by you will find that the answer is not found but the question disappears.

Unless you have the courage to doubt you will never come to know the truth.

A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.

The alternative to doubt is authority, against which science had fought for centuries.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

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

It is important that students bring a certain …, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.