Emma Goldman Quotes

William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

Uncertainty is a very good thing: it's the beginning of an investigation, and the investigation should never end.

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

I love to doubt as well as know.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

I was raised with the notion that it was OK to ask questions, and it was OK to say, I'm not sure. I believe, but I'm not quite so certain about the resurrection.

There are no sure answers, only better questions.

I want to make people think about certain things or have them ask the question of 'why.' I just want to always keep the people wondering.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and 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.

Once you've decided that something's absolutely true, you've closed your mind on it, and a closed mind doesn't go anywhere. Question everything. That's what education's all about.

I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children's books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone's universe.

I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything...

Question everything. Your love, your religion, your passion. If you don't have questions, you'll never find answers.

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

On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it.

Never stop doubting , never stop questioning, never ever assume you have all the answers. Having all the answers kills the question itself, renders it lifeless.....an d you too. Keep looking, keep seeking. Never, ever find it all. Because when you find it all, you deny that there is more. And there is never not more.

The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration.

For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.

the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.