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Evergreen Speech (Doubt/Uncertainty)

x It is better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.

uAnatole France

x There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

uAlfred Korzybski

x Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

uAndre Gide

x When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others. “Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?”

uBertrand Russell

x Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise. “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”

uBertrand Russell

x To deny, to believe, and to doubt absolutely — this is for man what running is for a horse.

uBlaise Pascal

x We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

uBlaise Pascal

x It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

uCarl Sagan

x When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.

uDavid Hume

x As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

uDonald Rumsfeld

x Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

uErich Fromm

x You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.

uFrank Crane

x The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

uFrank Herbert

x The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

uFranklin D. Roosevelt

x It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

uG. K. Chesterton

x One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.

uGeorg C. Lichtenberg

x An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.

uHenri Bergson

x Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters. New York Times, December 3, 1978

uIsaac Bashevis Singer

x Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart, for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

uJames Baldwin

x I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.

uJames Joyce

x Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we often might win, by fearing to attempt.

uJane Addams

x Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.

uJohann Kaspar Lavater

x Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.

uJohn A. Hutchinson

x We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.

uJohn Naisbitt

x Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

uJohn Wooden

x Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one.

uMark Twain

x Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.

uMary Kay Ash

x To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

uOliver Wendell Holmes

x There are no creeds in mathematics.

uPeter F. Drucker

x The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

uPierre Abelard

x Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

uRalph Waldo Emerson

x The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.

uRollo May

x There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

uTheodore Rubin

x Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever or whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

uThomas H. Huxley

x The people cannot be all, and always well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.

uThomas Jefferson

x If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.

uTom Peters

x I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

uUmberto Eco

x The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

uUrsula K. Le Guin

x What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

uVictor Frankl

x Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

uVince Lombardi

x It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

uVirginia Woolf