Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph: killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.
—Leonard Cohen
If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
—Arthur C. Clarke
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
—Laurens Van der Post
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
—Bertrand Russell
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
—J. D. Salinger
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
—Bertrand Russell
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.
—Bertrand Russell
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
—Alfred Korzybski
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
—Carl Sagan
We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.
—Desmond Morris
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
—Max Beerbohm
Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind.… In the process of discovering our true nature, the journey goes down, not up.… Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt.… We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we will let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of compassion. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.
—Pema Chödrön
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
—George W. Bush
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority.… All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.
—H. L. Mencken