Rule of Acquisition 263: never allow doubt to tarnish your lust for latinum. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e16: The Bar Association, Quark, Rom to strikers
When in doubt, do nowt. Late 19th century proverb
Doubt as sin – Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature – is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
What’s absolutely striking about the writings of Islamic scholars by the 9th century is the increasing use of the word ... which in English means doubts. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Science & Islam, BBC 2009
Abu al-Haytham hated this nonsensical contradiction. In the early 11th century he wrote Doubts on Ptolemy. ibid.
Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century. Salman Rushdie
Authority has every reason to fear the sceptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt. Robert Lindner
Is it not certain that everything is uncertain? Blaise Pascal
If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no-one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom. Lord Byron
I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb,
And heard Troy doubted: time will doubt of Rome. Lord Byron
His doubts are better than most people’s certainties. Philip Yorke, Lord Hardwicke, re Lord Dirleton’s Law Doubts 1698
Doubt is a fundamental part of religion. The Bible is full of it. The Old Testament is shot through with doubt – though in its stories doubters tend to feel God’s wrath ... Doubt has chipped away at the very fabric of Christianity. Catholic and Protestant. At times threatening to dynamite its foundations. We can trace this scepticism back to a period called the Enlightenment. Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, BBC 2009
Of that there is no manner of doubt –
No probable, possible shadow of doubt –
No possible doubt whatever. W S Gilbert, The Gondoliers, 1889
Doubt whom you will, but never yourself. Christian Nestell Bovee
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire
Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man’s onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason. Albert Pike
To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess’s being: it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her – doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
My expertise is in deception … It offends me when someone takes the skills of my honest living [magician] if you will and uses it to twist and distort and manipulate people and their sense of reality and how the world works. Merchants of Doubt, Jamie Swiss, 2014
‘Global warming is a hoax’ … ‘There is no consensus. This is a myth.’ ibid. politicians
These guys are rich, they’re politically powerful and they’re mean. ibid. anti-tobacco campaigner
Flame retardants in your house: they don’t protect you from anything. ibid. woman
Global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. ibid. Jim Hansen
All of the papers that had been published since 1992 to 2002 that had used the keywords ‘global climate change’. And then we read them. The question was, how many of those papers disagreed that most of the observed warming is due to increase in greenhouse gas concentrations? … We found nothing. ibid. educational scientist
I consider myself primarily a scientist. ibid. Fred Singer, sceptic
All of this is a political debate about the role of government. ibid. educational scientist
Citizens for fire safety was a front group. ibid. investigator
I have extended periods of real doubt. I’m just holding on by a thread. Roman J Israel Esq 2017 starring Denzel Washington & Colin Farrell & Carmen Ejogo & Lynda Gravatt & Amanda Warren & Hugo Armstrong & Sam Gilroy & Tony Plana & DeRon Horton & Amari Cheatom et al, director Dan Gilroy, her to him
A fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt. Aldous Huxley
It is more shameful to doubt one’s friends than to be duped by them. Duc de la Rochefoucauld