George MacDonald Quotes

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

I love to doubt as well as know.

To doubt has more of faith ... than that blank negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting trotters.

if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.

Unless you have the courage to doubt you will never come to know the truth.

Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.

To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

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

"Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those "truths" we once believed."

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

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.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.

My only weapon is the question.

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.

By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth.

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.

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

I hate doubt, yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worth believing in.

He who replies to words of doubt doth put the light of knowledge out.

But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.

If you haven't doubted, you probably haven't thought very hard about what you believe.