Gertrude Atherton Quotes

He who doubts, knows - knows as much as can be known.

The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know.

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?

I don't know anything and neither do you.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

many things I knew, I have forgotten; many things I thought I knew, I find I know nothing about; some things I know, I have found not worth knowing; and some things I would give - O what would one not give to know? are beyond the reach of human ken.

Maybe we're the fools, for thinking we know things. Maybe humans are the only ones who can deal with the fact that nothing can ever be known at all.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

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.

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

I know that I don’t 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.

The clear and perfect truth no man has seen, nor will there be anyone who knows about the gods and what I say about all things...; for, however perfect what he says may be, yet he does not know it; all things are matters of opinion.

I know nothing and perhaps I never will.

We know nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.

The goal is to know how not-to-know.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

For me now, what I've come to is, we don't know anything.

No one knows anything for 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