quotations about doubt
Suspect suspicion, and doubt only doubt.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Deceit"
Doubt is the whetstone of understanding.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
U.S.A.
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 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
Sometimes we think doubt is not good, but doubt is important. It's not so important that we should become crazy from it, but if you are questioning, that's fine. We need to question. Even though you don't get answers to your questions, all you have to do is just swim.
DAININ KATAGIRI
Each Moment Is the Universe
Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step.
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
When in doubt, punt!
JOHN HEISMAN
Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.
THOMAS SZASZ
"Mental Illness,", The Second Sin
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
God have mercy on the man
Who doubts what he's sure of.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Brilliant Disguise", Tunnel of Love
With knowledge grows doubt.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Doubt is a surly, envious, egotistic emotion, a bitter denial of everything but the sullen self.
RUSSELL KIRK
The Conservative Mind
I must doubt everything, or realize my faith by exterminating every obstacle.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
Doubt is not the opposite of confidence. Doubt can actually be a virtue; it is a form of self-reflection that anyone in a leadership position should exercise now and again. Having doubts about a course of action is a manifestation of a creative and lively mind, one that is engaged in the pursuit of a goal. The ability to question that pursuit means that you are open to change and circumstance. You may change or you may not, but at least you are open to the real world and the twists and turns it may toss you.
JOHN BALDONI
Lead By Example
Doubt is a profound and effective spiritual motivator. Without doubt, no truism is transcended, no new knowledge found, no expansion of the imagination possible. Doubt is unsettling to the ego, and those who are drawn to ideologies that promise the dispelling of doubt by proffering certainties will never grow. In seeking certainty they are courting the death of the soul, whose nature is forever churning possibility, forever seeking the larger, forever riding the melting edge of certainty's glacier.
JAMES HOLLIS
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Doubt is often as that angel that troubled the waters of old, so that they might become a source of healing to the crippled and diseased.
ALEXANDER HENRY CRAUFURD
Enigmas of the Spiritual Life
When a doubt is once received, men labour rather how to keep it a doubt still, than how to solve it; and accordingly bend their wits.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Nothing is more durable than the dynasty of Doubt; for he reigns in the hearts of all his people, but gives satisfaction to none of them, and yet he is the only despot who can never die, while any of his subjects live.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Doubt, genuine doubt, is a good thing; not as an end, mark you, for so it is deadly, but as a means to an end.
DAVID JAMES BURRELL
The Gospel of Gladness