John Wesley Quotes

If one has the answers to all the questions - that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.

In this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt.

As an elder I mistrust the wisdom of age.

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

How can a rabbi not live with doubt? The Bible itself is a book of doubt.

Why would anyone walk through life satisfied with the light from the candle of their own understanding when, by reaching out to our Heavenly Father, they could experience the bright sun of spiritual knowledge that would expand their minds with wisdom and fill their souls with joy?

Of course I know very little about architecture, and the older I get the less I know.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

I think the philosophy that we don't know as much as we think we know resonates throughout my work.

I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world.

As an undergraduate, I took a theology course titled Religion as Writing. If writing can be considered a form of faith, then inevitably doubt has to accompany it.

I could be wrong about salvation. I could be wrong about a lot of things.

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Who knows most, doubts most.

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overpowering conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day

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 hope to God that I know what I am doing.

One of my bywords is that nobody knows anything, including me.

Who am I to judge is what I say. I'm 90 years old, for crying out loud, and I don't sit in any chariot.

One needs only to get old to become milder; I don't see anyone make a mistake I hadn't also made.

As I get older I seem to believe less and less and yet to believe what I do believe more and more.

Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.

Only the fools are certain and assured.

We need wisdom the most when we believe in it the least.