
“To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence it would be to doubt everything.”
Letter to Fr. Pastells (4 April 1893)
Source: On Certainty (1969)
“To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence it would be to doubt everything.”
Letter to Fr. Pastells (4 April 1893)
Book I, v, 8
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Source: The Advancement Of Learning
Context: The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: 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.
“The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.”
It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.
from lecture "What is and What Should be the Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society", given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy (1964)
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999)
“My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.”
Source: Anna Karenina Notes
“To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.”
No. 61.
Maxims and Moral Sentences
“It's not doubt that drives people crazy, it's certainty that does.”
Un chagrin de passage (1994, A Fleeting Sorrow, translated 1995)
“There’s always doubt. There’s nothing you can get hold of.”
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)