“He was in a state of doubt which passed very well for modesty.”

“In science, modesty and genius do not coexist well together. (In Washington, modesty and cleverness don’t.) Einstein is perhaps the most famous exception to the rule.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

“For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

“She may very well pass for forty three
In the dusk with the light behind her.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

“What a state of society is this in which free-thinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin?”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

“We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Detraction paves the way for the very perfections which it doubts and denies.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

“Right now, no sane and unbiased person would be so stupid as to doubt that the North Korean state is very repressive.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

“I replace melancholy by courage, doubt by certainty, despair by hope, malice by good, complaints by duty, scepticism by faith, sophisms by cool equanimity and pride by modesty.”

Comte de Lautréamont Poésies I

“He almost told her everything right then, that very moment. But you grab a moment, or you let it pass. He let it pass.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author