Quotes about doubt
page 6

“Things did change. He’d gone from being eaten up with jealousy of Simon, to a grudging respect for his tenacity and courage, to actually considering him a friend, though he doubted he’d ever say so out loud”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Jealousy, Courage, Change

“One day you may kiss a man you can’t breathe without, and find breath is of little consequence.”
“Right, and one day my prince might come.”
“I doubt he’ll be a prince, Ms. Lane. Men rarely are.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

Men, Kiss

“They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Love

“The world had taken a deep breath and was having doubts about continuing to revolve.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

World

“Everything is false, everything is possible, everything is doubtful.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Source: Complete Works

Falseness

“Doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don't; you couldn't with eyebrows like yours.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

“Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

" What I Believe http://www.unz.org/Pub/Forum-1930sep-00133" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 136 <br class="br">1930s <br class="br">Context: Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances, the heavier his load of faith.

Men

“Built to be lonely
to love the absent.
Find me
Free me
from this
corrosive doubt
futile despair
horror in repose.
I can fill my space
fill my time
but nothing can fill this void in my heart.”

Sarah Kane book 4.48 Psychosis

Source: 4.48 Psychosis

Love, Time, Heart, Despair

“A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

Heart

“There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.”

Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) Polish scientist and philosopher

Life, Way, Thinking

“Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

God, Idea, Passion, Heart

“sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Love, Thinking, Heart

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

René Descartes book Principles of Philosophy

Original Latin: Veritatem inquirenti, semel in vita de omnibus, quantum fieri potest, esse dubitandum
Variant translation: If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Principles of Philosophy (1644)
Variant: In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.

Life, Truth

“The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Life, Dreams, Reality, Appearance

“But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” ~spoken by Augustus McCrae”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

“If you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973)

Faith

“Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Source: Babbitt

World

“I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Help

“What are men? Children who doubt.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

Source: The Odyssey

Men, Children

“Will you never grow up?"
"I doubt it, and I certainly hope not.”

David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist

Source: The Seeress of Kell

Hope

“When in doubt about who's to blame. Blame the English.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

“She had loved him. He knew this; he had never doubted it. But she had also asked him to kill her. If you love someone that much, you did not lay that sort of burden on him for the rest of his life.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

Love, Life

“I had to nurture those doubts as if they were tiny, sickly kittens, until eventually they became sturdy, healthy grievances, with their own cat doors, which allowed them to wander in and out of our conversation at will.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Cats

“When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”

Cory Doctorow (1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author

“It wasn't good, he wasn't good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there. He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Women

“A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

Hunger

“Life is doubt,
And faith without doubt is nothing but death.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

Life, Death, Faith

“I think, therefore I doubt.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Thinking

“A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“Trust yourself, because as Oprah says, doubt means don't every time”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy

Time

“So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

Learning, Housing

“To who?" Bex asked.
"!" her mother snapped.
"Sorry." Bex shrugged. "To," she corrected herself, even though I highly doubted that had been her mother's point.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, Way, Imagination

“I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

“If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

Perfection

“Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

Source: Ficciones

Life, School, Memory, Time

“I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 4 "Called To The Bar"

Wisdom, God, Fear

“When in doubt, be ridiculous.”

Sherwood Smith (1951) American fantasy and science fiction writer

Remalna's Children (Crown & Court 2.5, 2011)
Source: Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction

“The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

Pain, World, Light

“Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency.”

Hugh Prather (1938–2010) American writer

Source: I Touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me

God

“For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Error, Effort

“Being with you is the best thing that's ever happened to me, the one perfect decision I've made in a lifetime of fumbling and poor judgment. I'd go through it all again to be by your side. Never doubt that. Never doubt how I feel about you.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: The Ruby Circle

Feeling, Decision, Perfection

“When in doubt, say nothing and move on.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Rendezvous with Rama

Source: Rendezvous with Rama

“He’d never get over her. He knew that without hesitation or doubt. He loved her. As deeply as it was possible to love another person. And God, he wanted her. Every day. In hit life. As much a part of him as he would be of her.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

Love, Life, God, Parting

“If you're ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don't trust in anything.”

Gregory Maguire (1954) Novelist

Source: Mirror Mirror

Madness

“Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? Do I really look all right in this plastic jumpsuit?”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

People, Speed

“No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it was human nature.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Nature

“Or. I hate that word. It’s two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Hate

“I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything… I wish, just once, I could say, 'This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Courage, Fight

“When in doubt, ingest carbs.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“He had fallen in love with this wild, beautiful country and everything it contained. It was the kind of love people dream of having with other people: selfless and free of doubt, reverent and everlasting.”

Michael Blake book Dances with Wolves

Source: Dances with Wolves

Love, People, Beauty, Dreams

“You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of.”

Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“Piper McLean," [Annabeth] grumbled, "that was without a doubt the dumbest risk I've ever seen anyone take, and I date a dumb risk-taker.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Thinking

“I doubt sometimes whether a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me - yet I sometimes long for it.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Life

“No doubt she was thinking, Who dressed this poor girl like a traffic light?”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Girl, Thinking, Light

“For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one's own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.”

Charlie Huston Sleepless

Source: Sleepless

Question, Sleep, Loss, Time

“Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity...”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Quoted in Amnesty International's essay "From Prisoner to President – A Tribute"

Life, Hope, Birth, Sense

“It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

“Never doubt my weaseling abilities, Shadowhunter, for they are epic and memorable in their scope.”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Magnus to Jace, pg. 148
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Life

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you
want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Fear, Home, Confidence, Courage

“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”

Chaim Potok book My Name Is Asher Lev

Source: My Name Is Asher Lev

Fear, Art

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

Faith, Question

“If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.”

Richard Dawkins book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Source: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

World, History, Thinking

“I would love to have a battle of wits with you, Bison, but I doubt it would be a fair fight.'
'Shut your face.'
'Exactly my point.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

Love, Fight

“Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Source: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

People, Sense

“I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings”

Timothy Findley book The Wars

Source: The Wars

Hope

“A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course of victory.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Victory

“Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Thinking

“To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Faith

“I had as many doubts as anyone else. Standing on the starting line, we're all cowards.”

Alberto Salazar (1958) American track coach and long-distance runner born in Cuba

“In the cool afternoon the fiend from hell specifically sent to lovers arrived at Janie's ear. Doubt.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Lovers, Hell

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Family, Home, Family

“… given sufficient ignorance, one can doubt evolution….”

Steven E. Landsburg

The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics

“I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. Cee”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Love, Life

“For a moment, I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be alright.”

Tana French In the Woods

Source: In the Woods

Star, Universe

“To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Dreams, Hope

“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.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

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.

“This is the hard part about having best friends that I feel no attachment to -- I don't give them any benefit of the doubt. And being best friends is always about the benefit of the doubt.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Feeling, Parting

“For the few little successes I may seem to have, there are acres of misgivings and self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Success

“And I remembered something else that makes us human: faith, the only weapon in our arsenal to battle doubt.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Faith

“God fills us with all sorts of yearnings that go against the grain of the world—but the fact those yearnings often come to nothing, well, I doubt that’s God’s doing.” She cut her eyes at me and smiled. “I think we know that’s men’s doing.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Invention of Wings

Men, God, World, Smile

“.

There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret everything you've taken from me, everything I've given you, and the waste of all the time I've spent on us.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Time

“if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to `Yes,' she ought to say `No' directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

Feeling, Heart

“Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.”

George MacDonald book Lilith

Source: Lilith

“He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Women

“We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Art, Passion, Madness

“faith without doubt is addiction”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Faith

“Love is the easiest thing there is. It's the layers of doubt, fear, and expectation that make it complicated.”

Luanne Rice (1955) American author

Source: Beach Girls

Love, Fear

“Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital… Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Lie, Hope, Reality

“I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all mean are created free and equal.”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Hope

“He who replies to words of doubt
doth put the light of knowledge out.”

William Blake Auguries of Innocence

Source: Auguries of Innocence

Knowledge, Light

“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.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. 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.

Truth, Fear, Lovers

“It truly sucks to doubt your friends when you only have one or two of them, I realized.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Working for the Devil