quotations about doubt
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"The Triumph of Stupidity,", Mortals and Others
Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, Doubt (called "the father of inventions" by Galileo), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Men often call themselves honest doubters when they are pure and simple infidels, contentedly dwelling in rejection of the truth.
DAVID JAMES BURRELL
The Gospel of Gladness
Doubt is death's plenipotentiary, its longest and wittiest shadow.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
A Defense of Ardor
Truth lies within the Holy of Holies, in the temple of knowledge, but doubt is the vestibule that leads unto it. Luther began by having his doubts, as to the assumed infallibility of the Pope, and he finished by making himself the corner stone of the reformation. Copernicus, and Newton, doubted the truth of the false systems of others, before they established a true one of their own; Columbus differed in opinion with all the old world, before he discovered a new one; and Galileo's terrestrial body was confined in a dungeon, for having asserted the motion of those bodies that were celestial. In fact, we owe almost all our knowledge, not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed; and those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves; as he that leads a crowd, must begin by separating himself some little distance from it.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
When in doubt, take a deep breath and keep moving.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
To sit down in doubt is either to abdicate the highest powers of a reasonable being, or to admit an enemy that will use them as instruments of torture. Except for souls of little intellectual activity, or wholly steeped in sense, this sitting down in doubt is like sitting down in a train that is moving out of the station with the steam up and no engine-driver, or in a boat that is drifting out of harbor into a stormy sea.
ANONYMOUS
"Victims of Doubt,", Catholic World, Jan. 1867
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt
They'd immediately go out.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
The Book of Lies
Doubt is often but as the putting away of childish things, preparatory to the reception of the deeper things of manhood.
ALEXANDER HENRY CRAUFURD
Enigmas of the Spiritual Life
Doubt is the pinprick in the life raft.
RANSOM RIGGS
Library of Souls
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can't believe; unbelief is won't believe. Doubt is honesty; unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light; unbelief is content with darkness.
HENRY DRUMMOND
How to Learn How
Who never doubted never half believed
Where doubt there truth is -- 'tis her shadow.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.
G.C. LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F,", Aphorisms
The moment one comes into contact with others, doubt is bound, sooner or later, to penetrate the armor of unquestioning repetition. The first reaction of communities to such doubts is to try to exterminate it by repression, varying from hard glances and ostracism to the burning of the doubter. But these methods of the Bastille, the Inquisition, and the fires of Smithfield, cannot succeed while the cause of the doubt, the actual diversity of belief in the world remains.
MORRIS R. COHEN
The New Republic, Oct. 26, 1921
Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.
BENJAMIN JOWETT
Scripture and Truth
To be once in doubt is once to be resolv'd.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Othello
Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
London Observer, Feb. 19, 1989
Suspect suspicion, and doubt only doubt.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Deceit"
Doubt is excellent when it is a question of securing what we already possess, but it can be fatal if it impedes us in pursuit of what we seek.
CARLOS FUENTES
Terra Nostra