Shirin Ebadi Quotes

Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.

Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.

I love to doubt as well as know.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.

It may feel good to think you're right. But it's better to allow the possibility that you're wrong.

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.

I think it's very important to keep in the back of your mind: 'What if I'm wrong?'

Incredulity is not wisdom.

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.

I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It.

I would say that I'm 98 percent skeptical, but the other 2 percent [is] open for the possibility of things.

A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.