Quotes on Doubt

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

Your father, Jo. He never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him.

Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke.

It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through -- a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.

The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

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

fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul.

I don't believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work and myself and what tortures of self-doubting the doubt of others has always given me.

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

Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?

[T]he essence of belief is doubt, the essence of reality is questioning. The essence of Time is Flow, not Fix. The essence of faith is the knowledge that all flows and that everything must change. The growing man is Man Alive, and his "philosophy" must grow, must flow, with him. . . . the man too fixed today, unfixed tomorrow - and his body of beliefs is nothing but a series of fixations.

People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt. That is a complete misunderstanding. The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority. As a result, people have hitherto been beating the air in their struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with rebellion.

Yet what happened in fact? In the middle of the night John woke up and saw me sleeping beside him with no doubt a look of peace on my face, even of bliss, bliss is not unattainable in this world. He saw me—saw me as I was at that moment—took fright, hurriedly strapped the armour back over his heart, this time with chains and a double padlock, and stole out into the darkness.

sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.

To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

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

Christians belive in a sovereign God who never says "Oops". We believe that all our days ... are divine strokes on the canvas of our lives by the Master Artist who certified his skill, his power, and his love in the Masterpiece of Calvary. If you doubt His skill in painting your life - look at the Calvary

You have a tendency, Hastings, to prefer the least likely. That, no doubt, is from reading too many detective stories.

Ah, Misha, he has a stormy spirit. His mind is in bondage. He is haunted by a great, unsolved doubt. He is one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions.