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Doubt Quotes

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Doubt Quotes

“Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.”

Mean Moral Doubt Intellectual Skepticism

Book:Selections from Carlyle

Source: Selections from Carlyle

“I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

“Scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it, or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another's work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt.”

Source: The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science

“(A unified) 'Europe' is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt.”

Done Facts Results Destiny Doubt Plans Failure Politician Projects Intellectual Europe Finals Scales Planning Vanity Inevitable Classic Damage Monument Utopia Programmes Utopian Unified

Author:Margaret Thatcher

“It must be a very dour and pessimistic astronomer indeed who seriously doubts that there must be countless numbers of intelligent civilizations scattered throughout the universe on other planets which are orbiting around other stars. An attitude which asserts that man is the only intelligent life form in the universe is intolerably arrogant today ... anyone who holds such an opinion today is, fortunately for those who like to see some progress in human conceptions, something of an intellectual freak equivalent to a believer in the Flat Earth Theory.”

“Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us.”

Thinking Knows Way Want Writing Self Faces Wish Deals Powerful Fiction Gone Clear Doubt Theory Intellectual Tools Institutions Discrimination Most Powerful Non Fiction Self-doubt

Author:Bell Hooks

“Faith always presented to the mind the idea of an abnormal intellectual condition, of the subversion or suspension of the critical faculties. It sometimes comprised more than this, but it always included this. It was the opposite of doubt and of the spirit of doubt. What irreverent men called credulity, reverent men called faith; and although one word was more respectful than the other, yet the two words were with most men strictly synonymous.”

Source: History of the rise and influence of the spirit of rationalism in Europe

“Language as a real thing is not imitation either of sounds or colors or emotions it is an intellectual recreation and there is nopossible doubt about it and it is going to go on being that as long as humanity is anything.”

Long Real Humanity Language Sound Emotion Doubt Color Goes On Intellectual Imitation Real Things Recreation

Book:Writings, 1932-1946

Source: Writings, 1932-1946

“Intellectual freedom means the right to re-examine much that has been long taken for granted. A free man must be a reasoning man, and he must dare doubt what a legislative or electoral majority may most passionately assert.”

Men May Mean Long Has Beens Taken Doubt Intellectual Majority Dare Granted Reasoning Free Man Taken For Granted Intellectual Freedom

Author:Robert H. Jackson

“The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. Its evil effects must be plain enough to everyone. All it accomplishes is (a) to throw a veil of sanctity about ideas that violate every intellectual decency, and (b) to make every theologian a sort of chartered libertine. No doubt it is mainly to blame for the appalling slowness with which really sound notions make their way in the world.”

Source: Mencken Chrestomathy