Doubt Quotes

“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. (p. 21)”
― Rollo May, The Courage to Create

“We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues, and thanked God that he was not like other men.

Unamuno might be describing the artist as well as the Christian as he writes, "Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“Whatever your passion is, keep doing it. Don't waste time chasing after success or comparing yourself to others. Every flower blooms at a different pace. Excel at doing what your passion is and only focus on perfecting it. Eventually people will see what you are great at doing, and if you are truly great, success will come chasing after you.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Dubium sapientiae initium. (Doubt is the origin of wisdom.)”
― Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy

“If you doubt you can accomplish something, then you can't accomplish it. You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.”
― Rosalynn Carter

“If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.”
― Leszek Kolakowski, Metaphysical Horror

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves and wiser people so full of doubt.”
― Leah Wilson, The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy

“The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Clarence Darrow, Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays

“He who replies to words of doubt
doth put the light of knowledge out.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“To better understand God we must first shatter our own idea of God - maybe even day after day. Maybe he's too great to stay compressed in the human mind. Maybe he splits it wide open; this is why pretentious intellectualism so often fails to comprehend the concept of God: it is only accepting of what it can explain while in the process finding higher sources offensive. What we may confidently assert is that faith is the opening that allows God, this unpredictable, unseen power, to travel in and out of the mind without all the pains of confusion.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Trust is not a gasoline-soaked blanket that succumbs to the matches of betrayal, never able to be used for its warmth again; it’s a tapestry that wears thin in places, but can be patched over if you have the right materials, circumstances, and patience to repair it. If you don’t, you’re always the one who feels the coldest when winter comes.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment - the infinite, personal God who is really there - then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth.”
― Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays

“Whenever you should doubt your self-worth, remember the lotus flower.
Even though it plunges to life from beneath the mud, it does not allow the dirt that surrounds it to affect its growth or beauty. Be that lotus flower always. Do not allow any negativity or ugliness in your surroundings destroy your confidence, affect your growth, or make you question your self-worth.”
― Suzy Kassem

“Da used to say that lies were easy, but trust was hard. Trust is like faith: it can turn people into believers, but every time it's lost, trust becomes harder and harder to win back.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

“It isn't fair how I doubt him, and I wonder if he'll ever gather that my loss of faith extends further than I'd ever known it would, severing lines of trust and leveling my confidence like a city-flattening tornado.”
― Tammara Webber, Good For You

“Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.”
― Mark Buchanan, Your God Is Too Safe

“Dubium sapientiae initium (Doubt is the origin of wisdom).”
― René Descartes

“Some people with DID present their narratives of sadistic abuse in a quite matter-of-fact way, without perceptible affect. This may sometimes be done as a way of protecting themselves, and the listener, from the emotional impact of their experience. We have found that people describing trauma in a flat way, without feeling, are usually those who have been more chronically abused, while those with affect still have a sense of self that can observe the tragedy of betrayal and have feelings about it. In some cases, this deadpan presentation can also be the result of cult training and brainwashing. Unfortunately, when a patient describes a traumatic experience without showing any apparent emotion, it can make the listener doubt whether the patient is telling the truth.
(page 119, Chapter 9, Some clinical implications of believing or not believing the patient)”
― Graeme Galton, Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“...when he kneels at other times and prays or meditates or tries to achieve a Big-Picture spiritual understanding of God as he can understand Him, he feels Nothing — not nothing, but Nothing, an edgeless blankness that somehow feels worse than the sort of unconsidered atheism he Came In with.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Relax; the world's not watching that closely. It's too busy contemplating itself in the mirror.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year

“Always have faith in yourself and the universe, for one will not get you anywhere without the other. Both must be equally strong to reach your desires, for they are the wings that will lift you to your dreams.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I do not believe that God has given us this trial to not purpose. I know that the day will come when we will clearly understand why this persecution with all it's sufferings has been bestowed upon us -- for everything that Our Lord does is for our good. And yet, even as I write these words I feel the oppressive weight in my heart of those last stammering words of Kichijiro in the morning of his departure: "Why has Deus Sama imposed this suffering on us?" and then the resentment in those eyes that he turned upon me. "Father", he had said "what evil have we done?"

I suppose I should simply cast from my mind these meaningless words of the coward; yet why does his plaintive voice pierce my breast with tall the pain of a sharp needle? Why has Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants? No, Kichijiro was trying to express something different, something even more sickening. The silence of God. Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent.”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence

“All religions are man-made; God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Distrust is like a vicious fire that keeps going and going, even put out, it will reignite itself, devouring the good with the bad, and still feeding on empty.”
― Anthony Liccione

“The key to wisdom is doubt!”
― Marjane Satrapi, Chicken with Plums

“It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Pearl of Orr's Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine

“Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“He tried to read her heart in her handclasp but he knew nothing.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses