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
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
The depth of a man's questioning is more important than his answers.
ANDRÉ MALRAUX
Anti-Memoirs
Madmen never have doubts.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Orthodoxy
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
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
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
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
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
Doubt ... is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Memoirs of a Madman
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
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
If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
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
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam
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
Modest doubt is call'd the beacon of the wise.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
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"
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"The Triumph of Stupidity,", Mortals and Others