47 Doubt Quotes To Ponder

In our journey through life, doubt often weaves its way into our thoughts, challenging our beliefs and decisions. While doubt can be unsettling, it can also serve as a powerful catalyst for growth and introspection. Embracing the moments of uncertainty can lead to profound self-discovery and greater clarity. In this collection, we have gathered 47 thought-provoking quotes about doubt, offering wisdom and insight from some of the greatest minds. Whether you're seeking solace in times of uncertainty or simply wish to explore the nature of doubt, these quotes will inspire reflection and a deeper understanding of the human experience.

1. “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

2. “We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can almost be as stupid as a cabbage as long as you doubt.” - Dallas Willard

3. “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” - William Shakespeare

4. “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” - Voltaire

5. “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” - René Descartes

6. “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,The proper study of mankind is Man.Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,A being darkly wise and rudely great:With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;In doubt his mind or body to prefer;Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;Alike in ignorance, his reason such,Whether he thinks too little or too much;Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;Still by himself abused or disabused;Created half to rise, and half to fall;Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct old time, and regulate the sun;Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere,To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,And quitting sense call imitating God;As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,And turn their heads to imitate the sun.Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!” - Alexander Pope

7. “Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.” - Richard P. Feynman

8. “Life is doubt,And faith without doubt is nothing but death.” - Miguel de Unamuno

9. “Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure. ” - Reinhold Neibuhr

10. “I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.” - David Foster Wallace

11. “In a fight, your doubt is a target of enemy's attack.” - Toba Beta

12. “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

13. “Inventory:"Four be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.Four be the things I'd been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.” - Dorothy Parker

14. “To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.” - Christopher Hitchens

15. “In love we often doubt what we most believe.” - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

16. “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

17. “God is logic's corpse, a wound in reason, grammar's empty skin. (1998)It is as obvious to my left brain that there is no God, as it is obvious to my right brain that the living God is all there is. (2018)” - Jamey Hecht

18. “You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.” - Robert M. Pirsig

19. “The stubbornly doubter always wants to be heardby listens to nothing and misconstrues everything.” - Toba Beta

20. “The doubter doesn't sure which one is right,but it tends to demean other people's beliefs.” - Toba Beta

21. “Doubt isn't original.” - Toba Beta

22. “I’m not this unusual,” she said. “It’s just my hair.”She looked at Bobby and she looked at me, with an expression at once disdainful and imploring. She was forty, pregnant, and in love with two men at once. I think what she could not abide was the zaniness of her life. Like many of us, she had grown up expecting romance to bestow dignity and direction.“Be brave,” I told her. Bobby and I stood before her, confused and homeless and lacking a plan, beset by an aching but chaotic love that refused to focus in the conventional way. Traffic roared behind us. A truck honked its hydraulic horn, a monstrous, oceanic sound. Clare shook her head, not in denial but in exasperation. Because she could think of nothing else to do, she began walking again, more slowly, toward the row of trees.” - Michael Cunningham

23. “It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

24. “The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.” - W.H. Auden

25. “[Doubt] is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas bought in - a trial-and-error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the eighteenth century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar...doubt is not to be feared, but welcomed and discussed.” - Richard P. Feynman

26. “Faith without a measure of doubt ain't worth a brass farthin'.” - Howard Frank Mosher

27. “Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. -Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher and writer (1864-1936)” - Miguel de Unamuno

28. “Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.” - Criss Jami

29. “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

30. “A hunted man sometimes wearies of distrust and longs for friendship.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

31. “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

32. “He tried to read her heart in her handclasp but he knew nothing.” - Cormac McCarthy

33. “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

34. “Those mortals who operate in the grey area between conviction and incredulity are in a position to choose most meaningfully, and with most meaningful consequences […] Perhaps only a doubter can appreciate the miracle of life without end.” - Terryl L. Givens

35. “But the new generation had tasted the wine of philosophy; and from this time onward the rich youth of Rome went eagerly to Athens and Rhodes to exchange their oldest faith for the newest doubts.” - Will Durant

36. “Doubt wisely; in strange wayTo stand inquiring right, is not to stray;To sleep, or run wrong, is.” - John Donne

37. “One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.” - Bryant McGill

38. “I see it on his face. I hear it when he talks. We look out at the world and we see the same thing: Not Fair. And the only difference between us is Ricky's out there trying to get even. And he knows not trust anybody and he got it straight from me. And he knows not to try and get work, and guess where he got that. He walks around like there's loose boards in the floor, and you know who laid that floor, I did.” - Marsha Norman

39. “Like JJ Abrams,  creators just want to tell a story and entertain people. So why only focus in one way of telling it?Give readers another way to connect with your story.  Entertainment does not need to be contained in one medium. Think about telling your story in many mediums.” - Anne-Rae Vasquez

40. “The evil in the world must not make me doubt the existence of God. There could be no evil if there were no God. Before there can be a hole in a uniform, there must be a uniform; before there is death, there must be life; before there is error, there must be truth; before there is a crime, there must be liberty and law; before there is a war, there must be peace; before there is a devil, there must be a God, rebellion against whom made the devil.” - Fulton J. Sheen

41. “Don’t you ever get scared?” I ask.“Of what?” She says.“Of not being good enough.”“You mean at writing?” L’il asks.I nod. “What if I’m the only one who thinks I can do it and no one else does? What if I’m fooling myself-““Oh, Carrie.” She smiles. “Don’t you know that every writer feels that way? Fear is part of the job.” - Candace Bushnell

42. “Check other sources before believing mainstream media.Seek the truth.” - Anne-Rae Vasquez

43. “The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.” - Charles Darwin

44. “I don't need you to agree with me," she said quietly." I'll go away happy with a little bit of doubt. Doubt is good. It's an emotion we can build on. Perhaps if we feed it with curiosity it will blossom into something useful, like suspicion - and action.” - Jasper Fforde

45. “If only I could tell someone.The humiliation I go throughwhen I think of my pastcan only be described as grace.We are created by being destroyed.” - Franz Wright

46. “And yet when I wish to explore how faith works, I usually sneak in by the back door of doubt, for I best learn about my own need for faith during its absence. God's invisibility guarantees I will experience times of doubt. Everyone dangles on a pendulum that swings from belief to unbelief, back to belief, and ends - where?” - Philip Yancey

47. “You'll never be as good as the next page you write, or as bad as the last one.” - D.E.M. Emrys