philosophy of doubt Quotes

... that maxim of Descartes: "Question everything!" Question everything!

Only great pain is, as the teacher of great suspicion, the ultimate liberator of the spirit...I doubt whether such pain improves us-but I do know it deepens us.

If you question anything enough, you'll begin to doubt it.

Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.

There Lives More Faith in Honest Doubt, Believe Me, Than Half the Creeds. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

doubt is the privilege of those who have lived a long time

I believe in everything - a little bit.

I would say I'm a humanist. I like that. I mean, I don't claim to know anything, but I'm curious about it all. I'm always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything.

Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

It is not by believing but by doubting that one can attain to the truth, which is ever changing form and condition.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.

Just becauseWe cannot see,We are not entitled to doubt.

The truth we have to face about the world we live in is that it's driven by profit, and contradictions and doubts are not profitable. They yield wisdom, but wisdom is not profitable. I find pleasure in doubt, but let's face it, my pleasure is not very profitable. To me, the truth is that things mean many things at once, and all of them opposed to each other, and all of them true.

The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.

He believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing.

Never believe what you cannot doubt.

Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.

You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.

Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.

Agnosticism is the everlasting perhaps.

Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth.

I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.