Doubter Quotes & Sayings

Philosophical studies are beset by one peril, a person easily brings himself to think that he thinks; and a smattering of science encourages conceit. He is above his companions. A hieroglyphic is a spell. The gnostic dogma is cuneiform writing to the million. Moreover, the vain man is generally a doubter. It is Newton who sees himself in a child on the sea shore, and his discoveries in the colored shells. — Robert Aris Willmott

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe. — Franz Kafka

The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, the opulent often the best sense of the rustic, the dissolute often the best sense of the moral, and the doubter often the best sense of the religious. — Soren Kierkegaard

Think of King Jesus as our greatest doubter. Who saw the order of society and taught us to defy it. Who saw the ugly urges in ourselves and taught us to resist them. As we navigate through the powerful tides, doubt is our rudder. — Victor LaValle

I am an infidel today. I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no. — Luther Burbank

The doubter is a true man of science: he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science. — Claude Bernard

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

[G]enius is a true degenerative psychosis belonging to the group of moral insanity . . . — Cesare Lombroso

But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Saying something is far too simple is a doubter's way or trying to make the world more complex so he won't have answers. — Adam P. Knave

An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. — Clarence Darrow

The stubbornly doubter always wants to be heard
by listens to nothing and misconstrues everything. — Toba Beta

The fight of satyagraha is for the strong in spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying. — Mahatma Gandhi

What has happened to create this doubt is that a problem (such as a deep conflict or a bad experience) has been allowed to usurp God's place and become the controlling principle of life. Instead of viewing the problem from the vantage point of faith, the doubter views faith from the vantage point of the problem. Instead of faith sizing up the problem, the situation ends with the problem scaling down faith. The world of faith is upside down, and in the topsy-turvy reality of doubt, a problem has become god and God has become a problem. — Os Guinness

I've always been a bit of a self-doubter. I think a lot of actors are. — Kit Harington

Nevertheless, it is the free grace of the resurrected One that now also goes after the individual, overcomes the doubter, and creates in him the Easter faith. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When a mere girl, my mother offered me a dollar if I would read the Bible through; ... despairing of reconciling many of its absurd statements with even my childish philosophy, ... I became a sceptic, doubter, and unbeliever, long ere the 'Good Book' was ended. — Elmina Drake Slenker

Doubter wants proof which contributes nothing to her faith. — Toba Beta

It's true that Thomas was a doubter, but he was not a cynic, and that's an important distinction. Cynics often look for reasons not to believe and won't be moved by something beautiful - just to make a point - even if it's staring them down. Thomas wasn't a cynic, he was a hopeful doubter; he'd believe if he could. — Jonathan Martin

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

Unless you're a doubter and a worrier, a nail-biter, an apologizer, a rethinker, then memoir may not be your playpen. That's the quality I've found most consistently in those life-story writers I've met. — Mary Karr

I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson) — William James

I was always a doubter when it came to religion. How irrational of me, then, to love a zealot. But then, both love and zealotry are irrational states of mind. — Octavia E. Butler

The doubter's doubt is faith; his temptation is belief, and it is a temptation that has not been entirely quelled, even in a secular age. — James K.A. Smith

My job, my whole life, I've always had that kind of doubter, people have always doubted me. And I don't know how I would succeed without it. So I welcome it, and it gives me a challenge, and I will see if I can live up to my challenge. — Dwyane Wade

But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; thou waylayest thyself in caverns and forests. Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way! A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain. Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes! Thou — Friedrich Nietzsche

Here the only genuine conflict is between true believers. Of a given text in Holy Writ one faction may say this thing and another that, but both agree unreservedly that the text itself is impeccable, and neither in the midst of the most violent disputation would venture to accuse the other of doubt. To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism. Even the infidel Scopes himself is not charged with any such infamy. — H.L. Mencken

In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware there was anything wrong about it. No-one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind. — Mark Twain

See who is the doubter, who is the thinker. It is the ego. Hold it; the other thoughts will die away - the ego will be left pure. See the source from where the ego arises and abide in it. That is pure consciousness. — Ramana Maharshi

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

A man ceases to be an honest doubter the moment he refuses one way of getting at the truth because he does not like that way. — Oswald Chambers

Satan, our adversary, wants us to fail. He spreads lies as part of his effort to destroy our belief. He slyly suggests that the doubter, the skeptic, the cynic is sophisticated and intelligent, while those who have faith in God and His miracles are naive, blind, or brainwashed. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A gullible dreamer is better than an expert doubter. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Back in Georgie's attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying, Please, please, don't let it be true.
The first name shatters him.
The second makes his head spin. — Melina Marchetta

If I were not a doubter, I would know nothing. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Perspective gets lost in moral certainties. Which only means that no one was ever burned at the stake by a doubter. — Thomas H. Cook

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time. — Bertrand Russell

The believer who has never doubted will hardly convert a doubter. — Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

The believer is happy. The doubter is wise. — Edgar Allan Poe

Against the darkness outer God's light his likeness takes, And he from the mighty doubter The great believer makes. — Richard Watson Gilder

The question the doubter does not ask is whether faith was really useless or simply not used. What would you think of a boy who gave up learning to ride a bicycle, complaining that he hurt himself because his bicycle stopped moving so he had no choice but to fall off? If he wanted to sit comfortably while remaining stationary, he should not have chosen a bicycle but a chair. Similarly faith must be put to use, or it will become useless. — Os Guinness

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. — Ralph Waldo Emerson