Quotessence
Home / Topics / Doubt Quotes

Doubt Quotes

Browse 5874 quotes about Doubt.

Related topics

Doubt Quotes

“It can be a good thing if deeper theology, or philosophy, only makes one more uncertain. It may lead to a healthy doubt; he may throw his hands up saying, 'God, I just don't know anymore. If you're out there, I'm giving it all to you.' From there, after the surrender, he is allowing God himself, rather than theories, books, and documents, to take over and lead him into all truth.”

“I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.”

“The strange and wonderful Book of Job treats of the same subject as we are discussing; its contents are a fiction, conceived for the purpose of explaining the different opinions which people hold on Divine Providence. ...This fiction, however, is in so far different from other fictions that it includes profound ideas and great mysteries, removes great doubts, and reveals the most important truths. I will discuss it as fully as possible; and I will also tell you the words of our Sages that suggested to me the explanation of this great poem.”

“North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms has signed a deal with Random House to write his memoirs. Scholars will no doubt benefit from the reflections of a man who was wrong on every major issue for 40 years. Helms' aides say the proceeds from the book will be donated to the non-profit Jesse Helms Center where they apparently have more experience burning than publishing them.”

“By late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected--so entirely novel--so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions--as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears.”

“Every time I start on a new book, I am a beginner again. I doubt myself, I grow discouraged, all the work accomplished in the past is as though it never was, my first drafts are so shapeless that it seems impossible to go on with the attempt at all, right up until the moment - always imperceptible, there, too, there is a break - when it is has become impossible not to finish it.”

“My books have sold largely in England, have been translated into many languages, and passed through several editions in foreign countries. I have heard it said that the success of a work abroad is the best test of its enduring value. I doubt whether this is at all trustworthy; but judged by this standard my name ought to last for a few years.”

“I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it.”

“There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel... Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating the divine authority of those books?”

“I was not a good doctor, my studies had been too rapid, my hospital training too short, but there is not the slightest doubt that I was a successful doctor. What is the secret of success? To inspire confidence. What is confidence? ... I do not know, I only know that it cannot be acquired by book reading, nor by the bedside of our patients. It is a magic gift granted by birth-right to one man and denied to another. The doctor who possesses this gift can almost raise the dead”

“People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! It is quite another thing; it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy.”

“I tried to eliminate the need for Israel to strike out, militarily, by removing its major threat and attacker, and that was Egypt. I've written a few books on the subject. There's no doubt that the best way to resolve Israel's problems is to negotiate peace between Israel and its immediate neighbors, particularly the Palestinians. And that's something that's not going to be achieved, in my opinion, without the strong involvement of the American president.”

“I don't feel quite normal if I haven't written for a while. I doubt I will ever again write anything as popular as the "Harry" books, but I can live with that thought quite easily. By the time I stop writing about Harry, I will have lived with him for 13 years, and I know it's going to feel like a bereavement. So I'll probably take some time off to grieve, and then on with the next book!”

“If my novel gets any attention in Bulgaria, it will be as a scandal: a book about a teacher at a famous school and his relationship with a prostitute. I doubt very much it will be evaluated on its merits as literature. If Bulgarian were the book's only language, that would be painful and limiting to me as a writer. Since my book also exists in English - where it isn't scandalous at all - I feel comfortable with the possibility of scandal.”