Doubt Quotes

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.

Napolean Hill

When in doubt, observe and ask questions. When certain, observe at length and ask many more questions.

George S. Patton

Dubito ergo sum - I doubt therefore I am.

Kayvan Sylvan

Morpheus You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind.

Matrix, The

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

Samuel Butle

You are a child of the Universe, no less than the moon and the stars you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should.

Max Ehrmann

Believe your beliefs and doubt your doubts.

F. F. Bosworth

Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system. I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt.

Charles H. Mayo

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.

Peter Ustinov

There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H. 96, ll. 11 - 12.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, give her the benefit of the doubt.

Thomas Carlyle

Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.

Chinese Prove

All doubt, despair, and fear become insignificant once the intention of life becomes love, rather than dependence on love.

Sri da Avabhas

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.

Aesop

It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

Thomas Huxley

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.

Reinhold Niebuh

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

In the Norse mythology Loki originally was on the side of the rest of the gods, helping them once or twice using a particularly nast forms of trickery. He was a cunning negotiator with a talent for technicalities. He was sort of the Norse equivalent of a lawyer, no doubt the reason they tied him down in a pit dripping acidic venom on him.

Martin Terman

Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self - Confidence and your self - Doubt.

Kahlil Gibran

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind the fool is obstinate, and doubteth not he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.

Akhenaton

A lively, disinterested, persistent looking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism or doubt.

Henri Frdric Amiel

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheefully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait... And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

Walt Whitman

Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.

Charles Caleb Colton

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.

Laurens Van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958)

Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind. You are as old as your doubt, your fear, your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self confidence young. Keep your hope young.

Luella F. Phean

There are two ways to slide easily through life to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

Alfred Korzybski

Far or forgot to me is nearShadow and sunlight are the sameThe vanished gods to me appearAnd one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me outWhen me they fly, I am the wingsI am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

George Gordon Byron

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Bergen Evans

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.

Machiavelli

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - - Literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.

Ignazio Silone, The God That Failed (1950)

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

Andre Gide

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who would profit by the old order, only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new.

Machiavelli

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

Stanislaus Lescynski

When in doubt, punt.

John Heisman

For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.

Henry Louis Mencken