John Dewey Quotes

I've gone through most of my life not believing anything. Either I know or I don't know, or I think.

What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?

There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt.

In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,--the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.

I think of how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I think, therefore I am confused.

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

A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.

Who knows most, doubts most.

The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.

Sometimes my doubt seems intuitive, but most likely it derives from an implausibility or a logical problem I may at first find difficult to identify and articulate. It is interesting to me to work through questions that arise in this way.

If you question anything enough, you'll begin to doubt it.

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

When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.

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.

I think I'm confused, but I'm not sure!

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

I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.

The more I see, the less I know.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.

Scepticism is a barren coast, without a harbor or lighthouse.

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.