Doubt Quotes - Page 27

• It comes down to a doubt about the wisdom
  Of having children after having had them,
  So there is nothing we can do about it
  But warn the children they perhaps should have none.

  Robert Frost

  Children, Should Have, Choices

  Robert Frost (1971). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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• Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak
  of our own doubts, while dubiously
  we mother man in his doubt!

  Denise Levertov

  Mother, Hypocrite, Men

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.135, New Directions Publishing

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• If any doubt has arisen as to me, my country [Virginia] will have my political creed in the form of a "Declaration &c." which I was lately directed to draw. This will give decisive proof that my own sentiment concurred with the vote they instructed us to give.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Virginia, Giving

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1771 - 1779, the Summary View, and the Declaration of Independence”, p.198, Cosimo, Inc.

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• In fact, now I come to think of it, do we decide questions, at all? We decide answers, no doubt: but surely the questions decide us? It is the dog, you know, that wags the tail--not the tail that wags the dog.

  Lewis Carroll

  Dog, Thinking, Facts

  Lewis Carroll, Morton Norton Cohen, Roger Lancelyn Green (1979). “The letters of Lewis Carroll”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• God love the car. It has shown the naked heart that lives in all of us. Man invented the car but the car -- out of pure malevolence no doubt -- changed the history of the world by reinventing man.

  Harry Crews

  Heart, Men, Car

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• Goethe's devil is a cultivated personage and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft and the black art even while employing them, and doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Art, Black, Devil

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “Miscellanies”, p.135

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• There are doubts, sir, which, if man have them, it is not man that can solve them.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Solve, Ifs

  Herman Melville (1857). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.339

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• Faith no doubt moves mountains, but not necessarily to where we want them.

  Mason Cooley

  Faith, Moving, Mountain

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• Courage overrides self-doubt, but does not end it.

  Mason Cooley

  Courage, Self, Doe

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• The more knowledge, the clearer what the doubts are.

  Mason Cooley

  Knowledge, More Knowledge

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• The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.

  Anatole France

  Men, Choices, Training

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts.

  Sylvia Plath

  Ricochet, Certainty

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.78, Anchor

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• If we are the younger, we may envy the older. If we are the older, we may feel that the younger is always being indulged. In otherwords, no matter what position we hold in family order of birth, we can prove beyond a doubt that we're being gypped.

  Judith Viorst

  Order, Envy, May

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• I am plagued by doubts.

  Woody Allen

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• We must be willing to change chairs if we want to grow. There is no permanent compatibility between a chair and a person. And there is no one right chair. What is right at one stage may be restricting at another or too soft. During the passage from one stage to another, we will be between two chairs. Wobbling no doubt, but developing.

  Gail Sheehy

  Growing Up, Two, Want

  Gail Sheehy (1977). “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life”, Bantam

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• No fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. Equally, there is nothing so mighty or so marvelous that the wonder it evokes does not tend to diminish in time.

  Lucretius

  Believe, Simple, Firsts

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• I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly

  Bertrand Russell

  Fall, Thinking, Japan

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.706, Psychology Press

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• Language as a real thing is not imitation either of sounds or colors or emotions it is an intellectual recreation and there is nopossible doubt about it and it is going to go on being that as long as humanity is anything.

  Gertrude Stein

  Real, Color, Long

  Gertrude Stein (1998). “Writings, 1932-1946”

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• A layman will no doubt find it hard to understand how pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by 'mere' words. He will feel that he is being asked to believe in magic. And he will not be so very wrong, for the words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic. But we shall have to follow a roundabout path in order to explain how science sets about restoring to words a part at least of their former magical power.

  Sigmund Freud

  Believe, Order, Magic

  Sigmund Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1953). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: A case of hysteria, Three essays on sexuality, and other works”

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• A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.

  Jane Austen

  Marriage, Home, Men

  Jane Austen (1841). “Emma: A Novel”, p.383

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• The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.

  Franz Kafka

  Mean, Heaven, Crow

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• Out of the element of participation follows the certainty of faith; out of the element of separation follows the doubt in faith. And each is essential for the nature of faith. Sometimes certainty conquers doubt, but it cannot eliminate doubt. The conquered of today may become the conqueror of tomorrow. Sometimes doubt conquers faith, but it still contains faith. Otherwise it would be indifference.

  Paul Tillich

  Faith, Essentials, Would Be

  Paul Tillich (1958). “Dynamics of faith”

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• We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study ofphilosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Philosophy, Believe, Heart

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• Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Believe, Writing, Reality

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.188, Courier Corporation

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• I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Work, Profound, Faces

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