2,035 Quotes About Doubt

All knowledge begins with an expression of curiosity pertaining to the unknown or unknowable. Expressions of uncertainty and a doubtful nature lead a person to useful discoveries.

Sometimes you have no doubt because you have no choice.

[I]f you want to learn kung fu, you must learn to break bricks with your head. If you want to be a fiction writer, you must learn to stare at a blank page with nothing but your name on the top without flinching, without weeping, without getting up to get a beer to fortify your faltering courage.

I doubt that Fleming could have obtained a grant for the discovery of penicillin on that basis [a requirement for highly detailed research plans] because he could not have said, 'I propose to have an accident in a culture so that it will be spoiled by a mould falling on it, and I propose to recognize the possibility of extracting an antibiotic from this mould.

Knowing when and how to change course is important to success. Self-doubt is a lighthouse that will keep you from running aground. Don't become shipwrecked on the rocks of time. Be willing to rethink your decisions and change course.

We spend so much time defending our choice to do this that it becomes hard to show any vulnerability at all. There's only so many times you can handle someone asking about your fall back for when things don't work before you start thinking that maybe the fall back should just be your plan.

Questioning anything within doubt, will just bring mind to no certainty.

Sometimes things call out to us and we know them with total certainty. Yet, the certainty eludes us and we’re left with the angst of the unknown regarding something that, in fact, we know.

There’s ither poets, much your betters,Far seen in Greek, deep men o’ letters,Hae thought they had ensur’d their debtors,A’ future ages;Now moths deform in shapeless tatters,Their unknown pages.