228 Doubt Quotes

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

You write in your letter something which I sometimes feel also: Sometimes I do not know how I shall pull through.

There may be a time in life when one is tired of everything and feels as if all one does is wrong, and there maybe some truth in it - do you think this is a feeling one must try to forget and to banish, or is it 'the longing for God,' which one must not fear, but cherish to see if it may bring us some good? Is it 'the longing for God' which leads us to make a choice which we never regret? Let us keep courage and try to be patient and gentle. And not mind being eccentric, and make distinction between good and evil.

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.

I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree.

I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.

No matter how substandard you feel your skill or talent may be, If you never produce your art, the world will always remain deprived of it.

There is a mental fear, which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor's yard and stampedes us to burn down this house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt, doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we had long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging. It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong.

The beginning of thought is in disagreement - not only with others but also with ourselves.

Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

When I was a young boy, my father taught me that to be a good Catholic, I had to confess at church if I ever had impure thoughts about a girl. That very evening, I had to rush to confess my sin. And the next night, and the next. After a week, I decided religion wasn't for me.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

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

Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.

They misunderestimated me.

Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must Disappointment all I endeavour end?

My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time. In broad daylight, and at most seasons I am apt to think the greater part of it a mere dream; but sometimes in the autumn, about two in the morning when winds and animals howl dismally, there comes from inconceivable depths below a damnable suggestions of rhythmical throbbing ... and I feel that the transition of Juan Romero was a terrible one indeed.

If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?

I really want to love somebody. I do. I just don't know if it's possible forever and ever.

When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

Maybe the heart is part of the mist. And that's all that there is or could ever exist. Maybe and maybe and maybe some more. Maybe's the exit that I'm looking for.

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

Trust your doubt. Always fight for your beliefs. That is the path beyond thought.

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

You write in your letter something which I sometimes feel also: Sometimes I do not know how I shall pull through.

I agree about Shaw - he is haunted by the mystery he flouts. He is an atheist who trembles in the haunted corridor.

What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud, Serenely gazing at the violent abyss, Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory, Leaps downward through evening's revelations, and On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space, Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny, Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight, Am I that imagine this angel less-satisfied? Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?

I met a guy on the train when I was comin' out. It was one of those things that kind of makes you mad. I was out on the platform - I was in pants and coat that didn't match but I was riding first class. I was making conversation with a guy who asked me, 'Goin' to California?' 'Yeah, I'm goin' out there.' 'What business are you in?' I said 'The motion-picture business.' 'What do you do?' I said 'I make animated cartoons.' 'Oh' 'It was like saying I sweep latrines.' 'Some people make you mad, and you want to prove something to them even though they mean nothing to you. I thought of that guy... when we had the premiere of Snow White.

The more doubt you have, the less likely it is that the creation will come to life.

There is order in chaos, and certainty in doubt. The wise are guided by this order and certainty.

Much suspected by me, Nothing proved can be, Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.

I only disbelieve the unbelievable

I remember when I was doing a film with Fred Astaire, it was nothing for him to work three or four days on two bars of music. One evening in the dark grey hours of dusk, I was walking across the deserted MGM lot when a small, weary figure with a towel around his neck suddenly appeared out of the giant cube sound stages. It was Fred. He came over to me, threw a heavy arm around my shoulder and said: 'Oh Alan, why doesn't someone tell me I cannot dance?' The tormented illogic of his question made any answer insipid, and all I could do was walk with him in silence

I also am of noble blood, or so it seems to me. - Orlo

once I was open, could hope, I had no doubt but that was the worst thing that I could do

Don't even admit that you doubt their religion

How do you know you're right and were wrong? I don't know

Why am I so certain of my doubt? What? why is doubt the one thing we're never skeptical of? We question other peoples' beliefs, and the more sure they are the more we doubt them. But it never occurs to us to doubt our own doubt. Question our own questions. We think our questions are answers

Either it was too deep for [him], or not deep enough, he couldn't be sure either way

Once someone honestly believes something to be a fact, he'll never doubt it without pretty convincing evidence

Did any of these lines actually work? And even if they did, what came of it? One-night stands? Quick torrid affairs? Did any of these deliberate encounters lead to something that cured loneliness instead of simply easing the symptoms for an hour or two? [he] wasn't interested in meeting the kind of women who would come to one of those places looking for the kind of man who hoped to meet a woman there

I dim the lights... and think about you Spend sleepless nights... to think about you You said you loved me... or were you just being kind? Or am I losing my mind?

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves 'Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.'

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

I have no more now to say. I do not know, Hastings, if what I have done is justified or not justified. No - I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... But on the other hand, I am the law! As a young man in the Belgian police force I shot down a desperate criminal who sat on a roof and fired at people below. In a state of emergency martial law is proclaimed.

Seriously, does it bother anyone else that God might be fuckin' with our heads?! [Mimes digging] 'Ho ho ho! We'll see who believes in me now!'

Christianity has a built-in defense system: Anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it - and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist - is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field and just go, 'Show me.'

Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

He was very sad and he wasn't even sure all the time that he had done the right thing; but whenever he remembered the shining tears in Aslan's eyes he became sure. (ch. 13)

'She prays to God most every night And though she swears he doesn't listen theres a little hope in her he might.'

The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

If fallacies come knocking at my door, I'd rather feed, and shelter full a score, Than hide behind the black portcullis, doubt, And run the risk of barring one Truth out. And if pretension for a time deceive, And prove me one too ready to believe, Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act, I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact.

I don't believe in the landscape.

I say it because I don't believe.

La jalousie se nourrit dans les doutes, et elle devient fureur, ou elle finit, sitot qu'on passe du doute a la certitude.

The man that feareth, Lord, to doubt, In that fear doubteth thee.

The uncertainty lies always in the intellectual region, never in the practical.

Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic? A: Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

When you meet the president, you ask yourself, 'How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be governor much less president?'

Now the faith is old and the Devil bold Exceedingly bold indeed. And the masses of doubt that are floating about Would smother a mortal creed. But we that sit in a sturdy youth And still can drink strong ale Let us put it away to infallible truth That always shall prevail. And thank the Lord For the temporal sword And howling heretics too. And all good things Our Christendom brings But especially barley brew!

'You love God, don't you?' Nicholson asked, with a little excess of quietness. 'Isn't that your forte, so to speak? From what I heard on that tape and from what Al Babcock--'

Every living thing was shunning him. Poor little Peter Pan, he sat down and cried, and even then he did not know that, for a bird, he was sitting on his wrong part. It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Only when we know little do we know anything; doubt grows with knowledge.

He would have liked to say goodbye, Shake hands with many friends. In Highgate now his finger-bones Stick through his finger-ends. You, God, who treat him thus and thus, Say, 'Save his soul and pray.' You ask me to believe You and I only see decay.

To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence it would be to doubt everything.

The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good or there because they're lucky.

310. A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says 'Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all.'

370. But more correctly: The fact that I use the word 'hand' and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings - shows that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question 'How do I know...' drags out the language-game, or else does away with it.

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.

La verdadera ciencia ensena, por encima de todo, a dudar y a ser ignorante.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.

We always had a vision, but we weren't sure if it would translate or just come off as pretentious, we were playing basements, and Gerard would be like straight-up Ziggy Stardust. Kids would be horrified.

I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night an ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?

'Are you sure?' I said that sure was just what I wasn't anything but.

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

'They say money don't stink,' he said. 'I sometimes wonder.'

Dubium sapientiae initium.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all! Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men.

They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should a father object to your inventing a better plow than he had? They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now we have come to the conclusion that every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.