Bertrand Russell Quotes

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that are not so

Knowing and assuming are two different things.

Which country is real, mine or the teacher's? My wish is that we might progressively lose our confidence in what we think we believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered.

Suspecting and knowing are not the same.

Guessing isn't knowing.

Even though there are no ways of knowing for sure, there are ways of knowing for pretty sure.

I have throughout been curious about how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.

...skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground.

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

We are all seekers in some way. There are those of us who think they have all the answers and there are those of us who may never get an answer.

I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

He who knows nothing, doubts nothing.

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

He doubts nothing who knows nothing.

Ignorance never settles a question.

Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

I always admired Niels Bohr for uttering his opinions like one perpetually groping and never like one in the possession of definite truth.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

To me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet. That I haven’t understood enough. That I can’t know enough. That I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom… Those who tell you that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority: don’t think of that as a gift. Think of it as a poison chalice. Push it aside, however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.

We'd all like to be certain of what we know, but I think the most important question is to ask yourself do you really know what you know?

Trust is very hard if you don't know what you're trusting.