Suspension of Judgment Quotes

People seem very arrogant when they say 'I'm right and you're wrong', but in practice we all believe we're right. We have a staggering arrogance in our own belief. That can be tempered by not being 100% certain; by being provisional. No matter what the debate is, very few people have the modesty to suspend judgement on a whole range of things; most intelligent people have an opinion and are expected to have an opinion by other people - but it always requires making a personal judgement that goes way-beyond your expertise. We do it all the time.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged.

I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.

Assume nothing, question everything.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

Occasionally and frequently the exercise of the judgment ought to end in absolute reservation. It may be very distasteful, and great fatigue, to suspend a conclusion; but as we are not infallible, so we ought to be cautious; we shall eventually find our advantage, for the man who rests in his position is not so far from right as he who, proceeding in a wrong direction, is ever increasing his distance.

We must put aside all judgment of our own, and keep the mind ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.

I began to realize that I had tended to avoid some people because of my instant conclusions about who they were and what they would have to say. I discovered that everyone, speaking honestly and openly, had important things to tell me.

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.

Before you hate something you should try to understand it.

If ... it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power, namely, suspend judgement.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?

Emotional honesty transcends reality; it's what allows disbelief to be suspended and yet what makes a story stay true.

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

If I simply refrain from making a judgment in cases where I do not perceive the truth with sufficient clarity and distinctness, then it is clear that I am behaving correctly and avoiding error.

"True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton's 'Strange Story;' "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria!

Compassion can never coexist with judgement because judgement creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said...One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of silence, in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quite; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate

Skepticism is provisional, even if it lasts a lifetime.

Don't criticize what you can't understand.