quotations about doubt
Doubt is a sentinel on the watch-tower of the brain, charged with the duty of sounding an alarm, whenever its enemies--superstition, falsehood, ignorance and unreason--attempt to invade the citadel of truth.
HENRY M. TABER
Faith or Fact
Suspect suspicion, and doubt only doubt.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Deceit"
God have mercy on the man
Who doubts what he's sure of.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Brilliant Disguise", Tunnel of Love
Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.
BENJAMIN JOWETT
Scripture and Truth
Doubt is like a cloud which steals over the mind and prevents it from perceiving clearly, and from solving any problem concerning that which is perceived. Like a cloud, doubt increases or decreases in size and density as one fails to act according to his understanding, or is self-reliant and acts with confidence. Yet doubt is a condition of the mind necessary to be experienced and overcome before clearness of mental vision can be obtained.
HAROLD W. PERCIVAL
The Word, July 1908
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 the beginning of wisdom. Doubt is the precursor of inquiry; inquiry leads to Evidence; Evidence is the foundation of Knowledge; and Knowledge is the parent of Liberty and Power. Concerning skeptics a philosophical writer once remarked, "That they are men who pick holes in the fabric of Knowledge wherever it is weak and faulty; and when these places are properly mended, the whole of the building becomes more firm and solid than it was before."
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS
The Present Age and Inner Life
Doubt is one of the main paths on the highway to failure.
RICK PITINO & BILL REYNOLDS
Success Is a Choice
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
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
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
I must doubt everything, or realize my faith by exterminating every obstacle.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
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
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
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
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
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
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Doubt is a ghastly apparition.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit