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Doubt quotes

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“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” - 1623

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.” William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure” - 1623

“That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.” Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Pure Reason” - 1791

“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” - 2000

“And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism.” Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet” - 1929

“Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.” William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” - 1623

“Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?” William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanity Fair” - 1847

“Sometimes I lose faith in human nature for a time; I am assailed by doubt.” William Faulkner, “As I Lay Dying” - 1930

“The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.” H. G. Wells, “The Time Machine” - 1895

“Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone, but moral Doubt; all sorts of infidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis.” Thomas Carlyle, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” - 1841

“Thou doubtest because thou lovest the truth.” George MacDonald, “Lilith” - 1895

“The dead should be judged as we judge criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of a doubt.” Samuel Butler, “The Note-Books of Samuel Butler” - 1912

“And this same knowledge extends likewise to all other things which I recollect having formerly demonstrated, such as the truths of geometry and the like; for what can be alleged against them to cause me to place them in doubt?” René Descartes, “Meditations on First Philosophy” - 1641

“But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat;” René Descartes, “Discourse on the Method” - 1637

“and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am (COGITO ERGO SUM), was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might,...” René Descartes, “Discourse on the Method” - 1637

“The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgement than what was presented to my mind so clearly and...” René Descartes, “Discourse on the Method” - 1637

“He who has a conception of what it means to live upon spirit knows also what the hunger of doubt is, and that the doubter hungers just as much for the daily bread of life as for the nutriment of the spirit.” Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling” - 1843

“You can either waltz boldly onto the stage of life and live the way you know your spirit is nudging you to, or you can sit quietly by the wall, receding into the shadows of fear and self-doubt.” Oprah Winfrey, “What I Know For Sure” - 2014

Related topics

fear love truth knowledge spirit judgement difficulty death trust human nature philosophy experience intelligence writing thought good loneliness quality morality dullness

Related authors

René Descartes (4)
William Shakespeare (3)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1)
William Faulkner (1)
H. G. Wells (1)
Thomas Carlyle (1)
George MacDonald (1)
Samuel Butler (1)
Immanuel Kant (1)
Stephen King (1)
Søren Kierkegaard (1)
Rainer Maria Rilke (1)
Oprah Winfrey (1)

Related sources

Discourse on the Method (3)
Hamlet (2)
Vanity Fair (1)
As I Lay Dying (1)
Measure for Measure (1)
The Time Machine (1)
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1)
Lilith (1)
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1)
Meditations on First Philosophy (1)
Critique of Pure Reason (1)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (1)
Fear and Trembling (1)
Letters to a Young Poet (1)
What I Know For Sure (1)