Doubt Quotes - Page 34

• Doubt, but still hate!

  Pierre Corneille

  Hate, Stills

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• A man must be a born fool who voluntarily engages in controversy with Mr. Adams on a question of fact. I doubt whether he was ever mistaken in his life.

  Henry Clay

  Men, Fool, Facts

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• What, then is our duty? It is to carefully distinguish the historic moment in which we live and to consciously assign our small energies to a specific battlefield. The more we are in phase with the current which leads the way, the more we aid man in his difficult, uncertain, danger-fraught ascent toward salvation.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Life, Military, War

  Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). “Report to Greco”, p.578, Simon and Schuster

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• If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Sunday, Should Have, People

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• It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  History, Earth, Want

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969). “On Certainty”

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• What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism!

  George Berkeley

  Ocean, Labyrinth, Amusement

  George Berkeley (1871). “The Works of George Berkeley”, p.356

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• I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

  George Berkeley

  Might, Existence, Wells

  George Berkeley, Desmond M. Clarke (2008). “Berkeley: Philosophical Writings”, p.211, Cambridge University Press

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• Can we expect the redemption of the world from scholars? I doubt it. But the time has come for all artists to join together as a confederation in an eternal league.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Artist, League, Together

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• The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Views

  'Four Dissertations' (1757) 'The Natural History of Religion' sect. 15

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• Should poor souls fear a shade or night,
  Who came sure from a sea of light?
  Or since those drops are all sent back
  So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
  Why should frail flesh doubt any more
  That what God takes, He'll not restore?

  Henry Vaughan

  Fear, Night, Light

  Henry Vaughan, Henry Francis Lyte (1871). “The Poetical Works of Herbert and Vaughan: With a Memoir”, p.266

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• A friend of mine tells me that a Beethoven symphony can solve for him a problem of conduct. I've no doubt that it does so simply by giving him a sense of the tragedy and the greatness of human destiny, which makes his personal anxieties seem small, which throws them into a new proportion.

  Joyce Cary

  Greatness, Destiny, Symphony

  Joyce Cary (1961). “Art and reality: ways of the creative process”

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• Although my royal rank causes me to doubt whether my kingdom is not more sought after than myself, yet I understand that you havefound other graces in me.

  Elizabeth I

  Marriage, Grace, Kingdoms

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• I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind

  Countee Cullen

  God, Kind, Wells

  Countee Cullen (2013). “Countee Cullen: Collected Poems: (American Poets Project #32)”, p.42, Library of America

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• The sum is, that the worship of God must be spiritual, in order that it may correspond with His nature. For although Moses only speaks of idolatry, yet there is no doubt but that by synecdoche, as in all the rest of the law, he condemns all fictitious services which men in their ingenuity have invented.

  John Calvin

  Spiritual, Nature, Men

  John Calvin (2012). “John Calvin's Commentaries On The Harmony Of The Law Vol. 2”, p.132, Jazzybee Verlag

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• And some cease feeling
  Even themselves or for themselves.
  Dullness best solves
  The tease and doubt of shelling

  Wilfred Owen

  War, Feelings, Tease

  Wilfred Owen (1965). “The Collected poems of Wilfred Owen”, p.37, New Directions Publishing

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• Most of the 50 or so invitations you receive each week come from people inviting the President's Chief of Staff, not you. If you doubt that, ask your predecessor how many he received last week.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  People, President, Lasts

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• The things that haven't been done before, Are the tasks worthwhile today; Are you one of the flock that follows, or Are you one that shall lead the way? Are you one of the timid souls that quail At the jeers of a doubting crew, Or dare you, whether you win or fail, Strike out for a goal that's new?

  Edgar Guest

  Winning, Goal, Soul

  Edgar Albert Guest, “Things That Haven't Been Done Before”

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• They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.

  William S. Burroughs

  Science, People, Ego

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.348, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I have no doubt that the real irritation of those on the religious right is not that their particular creed is not embraced by the schools, but that often their creed is the only one singled out for contempt.

  William Bennett

  Christian, Religious, Real

  William John Bennett (1994). “The De-valuing of America: The Fight for Our Culture and Our Children”, p.218, Simon and Schuster

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