Francis Bacon Quotes

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

Doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction.

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

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.

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.

When did ignorance become a point of view?

Sometimes my doubt seems intuitive, but most likely it derives from an implausibility or a logical problem I may at first find difficult to identify and articulate. It is interesting to me to work through questions that arise in this way.

The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.

It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

I determine nothing; I do not comprehend things; I suspend judgment; I examine.

General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.

In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,--the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.

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

Only the most uncritical minds are free from doubt.

Doubting pleases me no less than knowing

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

With knowledge comes more doubt.

It is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt.

Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.

Not all questions are answered, but fortunately some answers are questioned.

Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think