Quotes
Quotes about Doubt
It's better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression that you're stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality.
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our "knowledge" and the perceivable facts. Since our "knowledge" is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered...
For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
For a strolling damsel a doubtful reputation bears. [Ger., Denn ein wanderndes Madchen ist immer von schwankendem Rufe.]
Jane borrow'd maxims from a doubting school, And took for truth the test of ridicule; Lucy saw no such virtue in a jest, Truth was with her of ridicule the test.
For right is right, since God is God, And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
Her mouth is a honey-blossom, No doubt, as the poet sings; But within her lips, the petals, Lurks a cruel bee that stings.
Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries! Happiest they of human race, To whom God has granted grace To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch, and force the way: And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
Be sober, and to doubt prepense, These are the sinews of good sense.
O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel (Who had no doubt some noble creature in her) Dashed all to pieces! O, the cry did knock Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished!
It is better to be silent, and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, ''Keep tomorrow dark,'' and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) ''Cheat the Prophet.'' The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.
The English Infantry is the most formidable in Europe, but fortunately there is not much of it. [Fr., L'infanterie anglaise est la plus redoubtable de l"Europe; heureusement, il n'y en a pas beaucoup.]
In the bitter waves of woe, Beaten and tossed about By the sullen winds which blow From the desolate shores of doubt.
