Samuel Beckett Quotes

He hasn't said whether he remembers the episode itself - or, if he doesn't, whether that is because it never happened or because it happened too often to keep track. More important, he hasn't said what he thinks about it all from the perspective of 2003.

It's my memory, and what happened between that moment 10 or 15 years ago and now, there's a lot of gray area.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

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

Doubt is really a groping ignorance.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is 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. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

With knowledge grows doubt.

There will always be more questions. Every answer leads to more questions. The only way to survive is to let some of them go.

The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.

I don't have answers. I have questions.

I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance.

The only thing simple about the past is that it's not now.

Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be.

Time moves in one direction, memory in another.

I am really more interested in questions than in giving answers.

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.

So basically, I don't know what I'm talking about. But maybe I do.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

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

There are many things that I don't understand.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

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

Between knowing and not knowing is not wanting to know.