quotations about doubt
My soul's poisonous doubt is all-consuming. My soul is like the dead sea, over which no bird can fly; when it gets halfway, it sinks down spent to its death and destruction.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Either/or
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
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
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
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
Who never doubted never half believed
Where doubt there truth is -- 'tis her shadow.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
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
Doubt is the pinprick in the life raft.
RANSOM RIGGS
Library of Souls
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
Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.
BENJAMIN JOWETT
Scripture and Truth
Doubt comes to the door in darkness, pretending to be alone and in need of your compassionate ear. But if you let him in, he'll bring his friends.
JULIA CAMERON
Walking in This World
Doubt is one of the main paths on the highway to failure.
RICK PITINO & BILL REYNOLDS
Success Is a Choice
Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.
G.C. LICHTENBERG
"Notebook F,", Aphorisms
Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
London Observer, Feb. 19, 1989
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
Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. Doubt is the precursor of inquiry; inquiry leads to Evidence; Evidence is the foundation of Knowledge; and Knowledge is the parent of Liberty and Power. Concerning skeptics a philosophical writer once remarked, "That they are men who pick holes in the fabric of Knowledge wherever it is weak and faulty; and when these places are properly mended, the whole of the building becomes more firm and solid than it was before."
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS
The Present Age and Inner Life
To be once in doubt is once to be resolv'd.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Othello
Doubt is a sentinel on the watch-tower of the brain, charged with the duty of sounding an alarm, whenever its enemies--superstition, falsehood, ignorance and unreason--attempt to invade the citadel of truth.
HENRY M. TABER
Faith or Fact
Doubt is like a cloud which steals over the mind and prevents it from perceiving clearly, and from solving any problem concerning that which is perceived. Like a cloud, doubt increases or decreases in size and density as one fails to act according to his understanding, or is self-reliant and acts with confidence. Yet doubt is a condition of the mind necessary to be experienced and overcome before clearness of mental vision can be obtained.
HAROLD W. PERCIVAL
The Word, July 1908