DOUBT QUOTES II

quotations about doubt

The power of doubt lies in its self-fulfilling nature. When we entertain a lack of faith that we can sink a short putt, for example, we usually tighten, increasing the likelihood of missing the putt. When we fail, our self-doubt is confirmed.... Next time the doubt is stronger and its inhibiting influence on our true capabilities more pronounced.

TIMOTHY GALLWEY

The Inner Game of Golf


Madmen never have doubts.

G. K. CHESTERTON

Orthodoxy


The depth of a man's questioning is more important than his answers.

ANDRÉ MALRAUX

Anti-Memoirs


Doubt is the one who likes to separate its victim from the herd, get the lamb off always and then call in its cronies. Doubt strikes you when _you_ are alone, but doubt itself travels in packs. Along with doubt come its nasty friends: despair, self-loathing, feelings of foolishness and humiliation. When doubt attacks, it's always with the same lot of lower companions like the bad boys in an Italian ganster movie.

JULIA CAMERON

Walking in This World


Doubt is not a thing "shot into the soul" from without like "a loaded shell shot into a fortress." It springs up in the soul itself; and the more you attempt to "fling it away" without satisfying it, the deeper and more ineradicable it grows.

A. LAYMAN

The Suppression of Doubt Is Not Faith


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

ALFRED TENNYSON

In Memoriam


Note the difference between a scientist and an athlete. Doubt is a scientist's stock in trade. Progress is made by focusing on the evidence that refutes a theory and by improving the theory accordingly. Skepticism is the rocket fuel of scientific advance. But doubt, to an athlete, is poison. Progress is made by ignoring the evidence; it is about creating a mind-set that is immune to doubt and uncertainty.

MATTHEW SYED

Bounce


You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.

ROALD DAHL

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory


There are two kinds of doubt as there are two twilights: one growing darker and darker, the shadows gathering, moon and stars vanishing, leaving naught but silence and solitude; the other leading on to light and gladness, brighter and brighter until the shadows flee away and the day breaks.

DAVID JAMES BURRELL

The Gospel of Gladness


Doubt ... is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Memoirs of a Madman


Doubt is often only a sort of moulting in the spiritual world, the moulting of the soaring eagle wings of faith.

ALEXANDER HENRY CRAUFURD

Enigmas of the Spiritual Life


There is a revealing phrase in English regarding this mind state: we say someone is "plagued by doubt." Doubt is like a plague that weakens us. When doubt is strong, instead of making the experiment, whether in meditation or anything else, and engaging fully in the experience so that we can see for ourselves whether it is beneficial or not, the mind simply gets lost in endless speculation. Then doubt becomes self-fulfilling, because staying lost in doubt really is useless. It doesn't allow for the opportunity to investigate for ourselves. This endless conjecture is exhausting.

JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening


To doubt is never pleasant, often painful, sometimes agonizing. And in so far as this prompts to inquiry and urges us to decision, it is very useful; but when it induces us to decide without inquiry or evidence, or without the proper use of them, the result is like declaring victory before fighting the battle. If we were so constituted that we could not doubt, what security would there be for the truth? What could more cripple the mind than to deprive it either of the power doubting or the power of believing? To face frankly and fairly the terrors of uncertainty requires courage. Indeed, to think at all, responsibly, rationally, and with absolute fidelity to truth, upon many subjects requires the highest degree of courage. It is easier, perhaps, to stand before a loaded cannon and see the match applied, than to adopt a conclusion utterly destructive to past convictions long cherished, and to the authority upon which they rested.

LOGAN E. BLECKLEY

The Green Bag, Feb. 1892


I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain,
And troubles swarm like bees about a hive;
I shall believe the heights for which I strive
Are only reached by anguish and by pain;
And though I groan and tremble with my crosses,
I yet shall see, through my severest losses,
The greater gain.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Faith"


In the ages of ignorance, it was a crime to doubt; now it is the sign of intelligence.

ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS

The Present Age and Inner Life


If we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an 'I' without shame.

EMILE CIORAN

A Short History of Decay


Truth lies within the Holy of Holies, in the temple of knowledge, but doubt is the vestibule that leads unto it. Luther began by having his doubts, as to the assumed infallibility of the Pope, and he finished by making himself the corner stone of the reformation. Copernicus, and Newton, doubted the truth of the false systems of others, before they established a true one of their own; Columbus differed in opinion with all the old world, before he discovered a new one; and Galileo's terrestrial body was confined in a dungeon, for having asserted the motion of those bodies that were celestial. In fact, we owe almost all our knowledge, not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed; and those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves; as he that leads a crowd, must begin by separating himself some little distance from it.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


Men often call themselves honest doubters when they are pure and simple infidels, contentedly dwelling in rejection of the truth.

DAVID JAMES BURRELL

The Gospel of Gladness


My soul's poisonous doubt is all-consuming. My soul is like the dead sea, over which no bird can fly; when it gets halfway, it sinks down spent to its death and destruction.

SOREN KIERKEGAARD

Either/or


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.

ALEISTER CROWLEY

The Book of Lies