Michel de Montaigne Quotes

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.

What is truth? I don't know and I'm sorry I brought it up.

Who knows most, doubts most.

I know that I don’t know.

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

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge

To philosophize is to doubt.

there is only one thing we do know and that is that we do not know anything.

This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

I think the philosophy that we don't know as much as we think we know resonates throughout my work.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

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

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.