Quotes, aphorisms and sentences on doubt, or on that mental condition for which there is no certainty, remaining in partial or total inability to choose in the absence of sufficient elements to determine a decision.
Quotes on doubt
- Small and big doubts, compromises and disappointments usually reside around the eyes, but there are no rules. Hopes usually hide around the mouth, as well as bitterness and tenacity. A sense of humor is easy to spot around the eyebrows, and so can dreams. (Ann Brashares)
- Doubt must be nothing more than attention, otherwise it can become dangerous. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
- Everything is unknown: an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspension of judgment appear to be the only result of our most accurate investigation. (David Hume)
- Doubts are more cruel than the worst truth. (Moliere)
- Doubt must be nothing more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
- If we are ever in doubt about what we have to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we would hope for in the aftermath of the choice. (John Lubbock)
- The truth does not want any other God besides himself. Faith in truth begins with doubt about all the "truths" hitherto believed. (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
- Hold on to the brighter side of the doubt. (Lord Alfred Tennyson)
- We express a multitude of prejudices, if we do not decide to doubt, at times, of all the things in which we find the slightest suspicion of uncertainty. (Descartes)
- Doubts that the stars are fire; doubts that the sun is moving; she doubts that the truth is a lie: but never doubt my love. (William Shakespeare)
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- When in doubt, tell the truth. (Mark Twain)
- Doubts everything. Find your own light. (Buddha)
- If the Sun and the Moon were to doubt, they would immediately go out. (William Blake)
- Tell people that there is an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe it. Tell them that the paint is wet, and they will have to touch it to be sure. (George Carlin)
- In doubtful cases, decide for the right. (Karl Kraus)
- When in doubt, dress even more formally. (Vivienne Westwood)
- If there is an obstacle that prevents you from getting anything you want, that is the doubt. (Robert Collier)
- I'm the doubt. Ask me and you will answer all your questions! (Taras Mithrandir)
- Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith. (Paul Johannes Tillich)
- Those who love do not doubt anything or doubt everything. (Honoré De Balzac)
- The only limit to our understanding of tomorrow will be our doubts today. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
- The doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep her awake and moving. (Frederick Buechner)
- In almost all philosophy, doubt was the stimulus that fueled it and certainty was the purpose. (Bertrand Russel)
- Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith. (Paul Tillich)
- I would like beauty in infinity, instead I find only doubt. (Gustave Flaubert)
- Indignation is the defense of the soul against the wounds of doubt. (Allan David Bloom)
- Supporting doubt is a harder job than giving in to certainty. (Daniel Kahneman)
- There is much talk about the beauty that is in certainty; it seems that the subtlest beauty that is in doubt is ignored. Believing is very monotonous, the doubt is deeply exciting. Stay alert, that's life; to be cradled in tranquility, here is death. (Oscar Wilde)
- Each sect, of whatever kind, is an array of doubt and error. (Voltaire)
- Doubt is to certainty like neurosis to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about people and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes statements about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions. (Thomas Stephen Szasz)
- I respect the faith, but doubt is what will give you an education. (Wilson Mizner)
- How prone to doubt, how cautious the wise are! (Homer)
- There are four things I would have happily done without: love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. (Dorothy Parker)
- Anyone wishing to doubt everything would not even come to doubt. The very game of doubting already presupposes certainty. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
- Beliefs are what divide people. Doubts unite it. (Peter Alexander Ustinov)
Aphorisms on doubt
- This is the essence of a witch hunt, that any doubt about the evidence or the procedure itself constitutes proof of complicity. (Bergen Evans)
- Any doubt is a question according to a method. (José Ortega Y Gasset)
- Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt. (Richard P. Feynman)
- The best teachers are not those who answer our doubts, but those who question our answers. (Mardy Grothe)
- A mind worried by doubt cannot focus on the path to victory. (Arthur Golden)
- There is something pagan about me that I can't get rid of. In short, I do not deny anything, but I doubt everything. (Lord Byron)
- Philosophy does not go further than probabilities, and in every statement it holds a doubt in reserve. (James Anthony Froude)
- Dogma is a defensive reaction against doubt in the theorist's mind, but a doubt about which he is unaware. (Harold Dwight Lasswell)
- Doubt lies above knowledge. (Alain René Lesage)
- It had always seemed a bit absurd to me that Hamlet, with all his paralyzing doubts about everything, had never doubted the reality of the ghost. He never wondered if his madness was actually not fictitious. (David Foster Wallace)
- A shadow of doubt already makes faith an absurdity, or rather cancels it, while occasional accesses of faith do not cause any substantial damage to the doubt, on the contrary they seem to legitimize it. (Arthur Schnitzler)
- Love is suffering - sweetened with imagination, salty with tears, seasoned with doubt, flavored with novelties, and ingested with closed eyes. (Helen Rowland)
- If there were only skeptics in the world and no believer, doubt would have lost any meaning and would have nothing left but to rename itself faith. (Arthur Schnitzler)
- In love there is no place for doubt, but only for the crazy certainty that our heart will never stop dreaming. (Alan Douar)
- The smallest word is surrounded by acres and acres of silence, and even when I can fix that word on the page it seems to me to be of the same nature as a mirage, a speck of doubt that sparkles in the sand. (Paul Auster)
- Our doubts betray us, and preventing us from facing the battle often preclude the sweet fruits of victory. (William Shakespeare)
- Amazement rather than doubt is the source of knowledge. (Franklin Pierce Adams)
- Doubt is part of all religions. All religious thinkers were doubtful. (Isaac Bashevis Singer)
- It is better to have doubts than false certainties. (Luigi Pirandello)
- Our doubts are treacherous and make us lose the good that we could get because we are afraid of trying. (William Shakespeare)
- A man who doubts his love can, indeed must, doubt every little thing. (Sigmund Freud)
- The sense of guilt never goes out alone: it is accompanied by its friends, doubt and insecurity. (Meredith Gray)
- Doubt is too lonely a pain to know that faith is her twin brother. (Khalil Gibran)
- Doubt who you want, but never yourself. (Christian Nestell Bovee)
- To dispel a doubt, whatever it is, an action is necessary. (Thomas Carlyle)
- Our doubt does not refute or attest to our abandonment to what we doubt, and the fact of engaging in the search for our gratification will not deter us from realizing, on behalf of the spirits, their intentions; and not wanting to see the reality of our spiritual nature will not serve to hide it from the eyes of the universe. (Khalil Gibran)
- Accustom your intellect to doubt and your heart to tolerance. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
- Doubts in your mind are an obstacle to the greatest success of the obstacles on the way. (Orrin Woodward)
- Do not let us pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. (Charles Sanders Peirce)
- Being in doubt means having already decided. (William Shakespeare)
- I believe we should always cultivate our opinions with some degree of doubt. I don't want people to dogmatically believe in any philosophy, not even mine. (Bertrand Russel)
- Choosing doubt as a philosophy of life is similar to choosing immobility as a means of transport. (Yann Martel)
- Doubts about all earthly things, and intuitions of something divine: this combination produces neither a believer nor an unbeliever, but a man who considers believing and not believing with the same eye. (Herman Melville)
- Believing is very boring. Doubting is deeply compelling. To be on who goes there is to live. To be cradled in certainty is to die. (Oscar Wilde)
- Question: what is the opposite of faith? Not unbelief. Too definitive, certain, closed. It is also a kind of faith. The doubt.(Salman Rushdie)
Phrases on doubt
- The problem with humanity is that stupid people are always very sure, while intelligent people are full of doubts. (Bertrand Russell)
- In reality, you only know when you know little. Doubt grows with knowledge. (Goethe)
- My main sin is doubt. I doubt everything and always find myself in doubt. (Lev Tolstoj)
- Doubt is a disease that derives from knowledge and leads to madness. (Gustave Flaubert)
- If you want to become a true seeker of truth, at least once in your life you must doubt, as deeply as possible, of all things. (René Descartes)
- Doubt is one of the names of intelligence. (Jorge Luis Borges)
- Properly we know only when we know little; with knowledge, doubt also grows. (Johann Wolfgang Goethe)
- There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, because it is through these that new discoveries are made. (Richard Phillips Feynman)
- Thoughts of doubt and fear never make anything happen. They always lead to failure. (James Lane Allen)
- Of the safe things, the safest is doubt. (Bertolt Brecht)
- We know so little what we do in this world that I wonder if the doubt itself is not in doubt. (Lord Byron)
- Your goals, subtracted your doubts, are equal to your reality. (Ralph Marston)
- In the fall, doubt is in the right place. The world seems to wane a little, just to give it a try. (Simon Carmiggelt)
- Doubts that the stars are fire, doubts that the sun moves, doubts that the truth is a lie, but never doubt my love. (William Shakespeare)
- Accustom your intellect to doubt and your heart to tolerance. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
- The weak doubt before making a decision, the strong after. (Karl Kraus)
- The biggest challenge facing you is your own doubt and your laziness. It is your doubt and your laziness that define and limit what you are. It is your doubt and laziness that deny you the life you want. (Robert Toru Kiyosaki)
- There is much talk about the beauty that is in certainty; it seems that the subtlest beauty that is in doubt is ignored. Believing is very monotonous, the doubt is deeply exciting. Stay alert, that's life; to be cradled in tranquility, here is death. (Oscar Wilde)
- The doubt is uncomfortable but the certainty is ridiculous. (Voltaire)
- Lovers are happier when they remain in doubt. (Oscar Wilde)
- My main sin is doubt. I doubt everything and always find myself in doubt. (Lev Tolstoj)
- Madness is the doubt of reason, and perhaps reason itself proves it. (Gustave Flaubert)
- There are two kinds of fools: those who doubt nothing and those who doubt everything. (Charles Joseph de Ligne)
- You should never be sure of anything, because nothing deserves certainty, and so you should always maintain an element of doubt in your beliefs, and you should be able to act vigorously despite the doubt. (Bertrand Russell)
- The problem with certainty is that it is static; little can be done, if not infinitely reasserting oneself. Uncertainty, however, is full of unknowns, possibilities and risks. (Stephen Batchelor)
- A man's doubts and fears are his worst enemies. (William Wrigley Jr)
- Living without trying, means staying with the doubt that you would have made it. (Jim Morrison)
- The only limit to our achievements of tomorrow will be our doubts today. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt)
- To deny, believe and absolutely doubt - this is for man what running is for a horse. (Blaise Pascal)
- Doubts and fears are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not break them down, gets smaller with every step. (James Lane Allen)
- Curiosity rather than doubt is the root of knowledge. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
- Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. (Descartes)
- Do not doubt our intentions is the best way to suppress the subtleties of intelligence and the nuances of sensitivity, that is, the most interesting aspects of life. (Nicolás Gómez Dávila)
- In all things it is healthy, from time to time, to put a question mark on what has long been taken for granted. (Bertrand Russell)
- The important things happen so quickly that there is always some doubt. (Clara Sanchez)
- Fear and doubt prevent us from seeing what is obvious. (March Grad Powers)
- Anyone who has doubts about the truth is wrong when making decisions. (Publilio Siro)
