Julian Baggini Quotes

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

Socrates was executed … not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.

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 whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.

I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

In my life, the only certainty is to be uncertain. I'm an unbeliever who believes in skepticism. I'm only sure about being unsure.

As soon as one point alone is removed from the sphere of dogmatic certainty, the discussion will not simply result in a new and better formulation which will have greater consistency but may easily lead to endless debates and general confusion.

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

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties.

To philosophize is to doubt.

To know much is often the cause of doubting more.

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

Every day a question mark.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.

I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer.

Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.

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

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

There is more truth in honest doubt, Believe me, than in all the creeds.