Not Doubting Quotes & Sayings

I'm always doubting because I've been told so much that, you're not the right look or you're not the right sound, and, you know, whether I do jazz or R&B there are always complaints. — Ledisi

Doubting yourself can be the biggest factor in holding yourself back. If you don't believe in yourself and send messages to yourself that you can't do this, or you will never be able to do this, you won't be successful. If you carry this attitude with you, then no, you won't be successful. Change your thinking! Change is not always easy, but once you change your thinking from negative to positive, your doubts begin to go away and you begin to manifest the positive. Don't doubt yourself! — Monica Breckenridge

Isn't it an odd thing that doubting doctrines and dogmas not fully articulated until the Middle Ages can make you a heretic? Admitting to your pastor or priest that you doubt God, the Church, or the Bible can get you excommunicated. Yet treating your fellow human beings as though they were worthless scum will get you elected to the parish council (or to the U.S. Congress). Being open and honest about your faith - or lack thereof - will gain you ridicule and contempt. But take heart, fellow Christians. If you pretend everything is good, and that you are a faithful believer in all things, you most certainly will gain the respect of everyone in your community. Well, except the most important person of all - the guy who railed against hypocrisy: Jesus of Nazareth. — Charles Shingledecker

tell me even though lies soft words
it was about to kill me with you that statue

i still in the art of love a baby
between us seas and mountains

you still can't understand
that all men are babies

so if i stood before your love quietly
then quietness in the love is love

our words in love are killing our love
and letters are dying after they're said

love stories may drive you crazy
cause its all full of fantasies

love is not a story,my dear
where the stars marry each other by the end

its to get hot blooded for anything silly
it's our misery, it's our killing doubting

it's this hand that assassin us
and we accept that hand that assassin — Nizar Qabbani

I've read some of Kurt Vonnegut letters from when he was young. He was a prisoner of war, and even when he was in his early twenties, there were things mentioned that showed up in his novels. One of the sweetest things in those letters was him wanting to be a writer but doubting himself, not having confidence in himself. — Susan Sarandon

Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt ... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth. — Saint Augustine

You must have patience with others because, if you do not have patience, your sincerity will start doubting itself. So you must have patience and to get patience you must know what you have been so far and where are you. When you will know what you were, you will have patience with others, tremendous patience. And by having patience with others, your sincerity will be all the time complete. By your sincerity, you will be completely integrated. — Nirmala Srivastava

It's
not so easy to walk away from someone when he
has made his way into every cell, when he has
taken over every thought, and he has been
responsible for the best and worst feelings I've
ever had. No one, not even the doubting part of me,
can make me feel bad for loving passionately and
hoping desperately that I could have that great love
that I've read about in novels. — Anna Todd

I wished to test your love for me, and it did not bear the test. You used to tell me that you drew the very breath of life but for me and love of me."
"And to prove that love, you demanded that I should forfeit mine honor," he said ... "that I should accept without murmur of question, as a dumb and submissive slave, every action of my mistress. My hear overflowing with love and passion, I asked for no explanation-I waited for one, not doubting, only hoping. — Emmuska Orczy

Never stop doubting , never stop questioning, never ever assume you have all the answers. Having all the answers kills the question itself, renders it lifeless ... an d you too. Keep looking, keep seeking. Never, ever find it all. Because when you find it all, you deny that there is more. And there is never not more. — Neale Donald Walsch

The story of Doubting Thomas is told, not so that we shall admire Thomas, but so that we can admire the other apostles in comparison. Thomas demanded evidence ... The other apostles, whose faith was so strong that they did not need evidence, are held to us as worthy of imitation. — Richard Dawkins

I began to turn my body, but he held me and laid me back onto the bed, insistently, kissing my breasts but not lingering, kissing a line down my stomach and lower. "You want me to prove to you that I want you more than I've ever wanted anything in my life, Roses. Is that true, aye? Because I just can't take this anymore."
I gasped as he licked into my sensitive flesh, wetting me with his soft strokes, speaking soft words against my skin. "If you insist on doubting me, Roses, if you absolutely insist on breaking down every defense that I have with your tears and your plush, wet, ripe beauty, then that's what I'll have to do, lass. Is that what you want from me? Proof?"
I could only sigh a soft response, already falling, burning, wanting too much. — Juliette Miller

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

We ought not give ourselves the benefit of the doubt if we plan on doubting everything else. — G.K. Chesterton

It is important to note that multiculturalism does not share the postmodernist stance. Its passions are political; its assumptionsempirical; its conception of identities visceral. For it, there is no doubting that history is something that happened and that those happenings have left their mark within our collective consciousness. History for multiculturalists is not a succession of dissolving texts, but a tense tangle of past actions that have reshaped the landscape, distributed the nation's wealth, established boundaries, engendered prejudices, and unleashed energies. — Joyce Appleby

I shouldn't be jealous because it's not real
she's like a math problem, the kind where you got the right answer but didn't show any of your work. She is the right answer, but she didn't get there by going through anything difficult, by questioning, by doubting. She landed there by playing a part, but she's never done the work.
I'm still jealous. — Jackson Pearce

According to the teaching of our Lord, what is wrong with the world is precisely that it does not believe in God. Yet it is clear that the unbelief which he so bitterly deplored was not an intellectual persuasion of God's non-existence. Those whom he rebuked for their lack of faith were not men who denied God with the top of their minds, but men who, while apparently incapable of doubting him with the top of their minds, lived as though he did not exist. — John Baillie

For the love of everything evil," Satan yelled and threw his hands in the air. "What's this crap about everyone doubting me? This is not good for my ego. I'm the fucking Devil - the King — Robyn Peterman

It is not by believing but by doubting that one can attain to the truth, which is ever changing form and condition. — Augusto Roa Bastos

You can see why doubting one's own craziness is
considered a good sign: It's a sort of flailing response by
the second interpreter. What's happening? the second
interpreter is saying. He tells me it's a tiger but I'm not
convinced; maybe there's something wrong with me.
Enough doubt is in there to give "reality" a toehold. — Susanna Kaysen

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false.
All stories about gods and devils, of heavens and hells, as they do not conform to nature, and are not apparent to sense, should be rejected without consideration. Beyond the universe there is nothing and within the universe the supernatural does not and cannot exist.
Of all deceivers who have plagued mankind, none are so deeply ruinous to human happiness as those imposters who pretend to lead by a light above nature.
The lips of the dead are closed forever. There comes no voice from the tomb. Christianity is responsible for having cast the fable of eternal fire over almost every grave. — Gratis P. Spencer

If the President says, oh, Washington's got to change, and people are doubting whether my change can really happen, I think instead what the public's begun to see is the change they're seeing is not the change they voted for. — Eric Cantor

Doubting charms me not less than knowledge. — Dante Alighieri

Persuaded of our nothingness and with the blessing of obedience we attempt all things, doubting nothing, for with God all things are possible. We will allow the good God to make plans for the future, for yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not yet come, and we have only today to make him known loved, and served. Grateful for the thousands of opportunities Jesus gives us to bring hope into a multitude of lives by our concern for the individual sufferer, we will help our troubled world at the brink of despair to discover a new reason to live or to die with a smile of contentment on its lips. — Mother Teresa

Wait for the idea. It may not come at first, but you must be patient, never doubting, waiting in faith. It will come. — Ernest Holmes

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier. — G.K. Chesterton

He had never been a believer in systems - his was an overweening faith that life lay in the contradictions, not in the formulae, in the doubting, not the certainties, the needs rather than the riches - and political parties seemed to him little more than artificial structures designed to save man from his loneliness. — Stacy Schiff

I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all. — Hannah Brencher

Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks. — Mark Buchanan

Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt. Men who love will have their misgivings at times; that is not the evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubting way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, without the manliness to say,
I must and will know the truth. That did not John. Brethren, John appealed to Christ. — Frederick William Robertson

Although this was not a comforting point of view, he did not reject it, because it coincided with one of his basic beliefs: that a man must at all costs keep some part of himself outside and beyond life. If he should ever for an instant cease doubting, accept wholly the truth of what his senses conveyed to him, he would be dislodged from the solid ground to which he clung and swept along with the current, having lost all objective sense, totally involved with existence. — Paul Bowles

Look back, believer: think of your doubting God when he has been so faithful to you
think of your foolish outcry of "Not so, my Father," when he crossed his hands in affliction to give you the larger blessing; think of the many times when you have read his providences in the dark, misinterpreted his dispensations, and groaned out, "All these things are against me," when they are all working together for your good! Think how often you have chosen sin because of its pleasure, when indeed, that pleasure was a root of bitterness to you! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I have met too many people who are looking for work, worrying about their mortgage, uncertain about their health insurance, and doubting that things will get any better anytime soon. Not just concerned about the present, many of us are doubting the future. — Brad Schneider

I am not alone is doubting the imperative to respect cultures, as opposed to persons; and I believe we can respect persons only inasmuch as we consider them as abstract rights-holders. — Kwame Anthony Appiah

Whether they realized it or not, they were doubting possibility, and the unknown. They believed I would fail. And when we only believe what has been said before, what has been done before, we give our own power away. Possibility evaporates; potential melts and seeps away deep into the earth below us. We cut ourselves short by thinking this way. I have always felt that it is from what we believe that our lives are created, not the other way around. — Shreve Stockton

But you said you did not love our father. How can you have faith in him if you didn't love him?"
"Maybe that's the reason," Adam said slowly, feeling his way. "Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe - maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure - never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe - why, maybe it's a kind of reverse. — John Steinbeck

The Koran is a not 'a product of Muhammad or even of Arabia,' but a collection of earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later age ... A few scholars go even further, doubting even the existence of Muhammad. — Daniel Pipes

It is my conviction that if any professional biologist will take adequate time to examine carefully the assumptions upon which the macro-evolution doctrine rests, and the observational and laboratory evidence that bears on the problem of origins, he/she will conclude that there are substantial reasons for doubting the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, I believe that a scientifically sound creationist view of origins is not only possible, but it is to be preferred over the evolutionary one. — Dean H. Kenyon

Doubting does not prove that a man has no faith, but only that his faith is small. And even when our faith is small, the Lord is ready to help us. — J.C. Ryle

You don't know that." He made a face, doubting this. "You don't. You have your whole life ahead of you."
"Maybe," he said. "But even that's not long to be the person she deserves. — Sarah Dessen

Because of this false idea, they devised an aesthetic belief in making the exterior of an object a reflection of the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. Yet these analyses of utility and necessity that, according to their beliefs, should be the basis for the construction of any object created by humanity become immediately absurd once we analyze all the object being manufactured today. A fork or a bed cannot come to be considered necessary for humanity's life and health, and yet retain a relative value.
They are 'learned necessities.' Modern human beings are suffocating under necessities like televisions, refrigerators, etc. And in the process making it impossible to live their real lives. Obviously we are not against modern technology, but we are against any notion of the absolute necessity of objects, to the point even of doubting their real utility.'
Asger Jorn — Tom McDonough

So it goes for those of us who live in a cul-de-sac, where babies are brought home from the hospital and watched over, where hearts stop and feet slip, where we wonder if there is a hidden road that leads somewhere.
We believe and we doubt. Believing and doubting share the same inevitability, but they are not equal. They cannot lay the same claim on our allegiance. They do not share the same power.
If there are places beyond the cul-de-sac, doubt cannot take us there. — John Ortberg

We are not necessarily doubting," said C. S. Lewis, "that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." He — Jan Karon

Doubting what you see is a very odd experience. And doubting what you remember is a little less odd than doubting what you see. But it's also a pretty odd experience, because some memories come with a very compelling sense of truth about them, and that happens to be the case even for memories that are not true. — Daniel Kahneman

How do we distinguish between the legitimate skepticism of those who scoffed at cold fusion, and the stifling dogma of the seventeenthcentury clergymen who, doubting Galileo's claim that the earth was not the center of the solar system, put him under house arrest for the last eight years of his life? In part, the answer lies in the distinction between skepticism and closed-mindedness. Many scientists who were skeptical about cold fusion nevertheless tried to replicate the reported phenomenon in their own labs; Galileo's critics refused to look at the pertinent data. — Thomas Gilovich

If you are wise,
You will mingle one thing with the other-
Not hoping without doubt;
Not doubting without hope. — Seneca The Younger

At which I was greatly lightened, and encouraged in my soul; for thus, at that very instant, it was expounded to me: Begin at the beginning of Genesis, and read to the end of the Revelations, and see if you can find, that there were ever any that trusted in the Lord, and were confounded. So coming home, I presently went to my Bible, to see if I could find that saying, not doubting but to find it presently; for it was so fresh, and with such strength and comfort on my spirit, that it was as if it talked with me. 64. Well, I looked, but I found it not; — John Bunyan

It's not adviseable to always go around doubting others all the time. However, it is logical. — Carroll Bryant

The discrepancy is that the ethical self should be found immanently in the despair, that the individual won himself by persisting in the despair. True, he has used something within the category of freedom, choosing himself, which seem to remove the difficulty, one that presumably has not struck many, since philosophically doubting everything and then finding the true beginning goes one, two, three. But that does not help. In despairing, I use myself to despair, and therefore I can indeed despair of everything by myself. But if I do this, I cannot come back by myself. It is in this moment of decision that the individual needs divine assistance, whereas it is quite correct that in order to be at this point one must first have understood the existence-relation between the aesthetic and the ethical; that is to say, by being there in passion and inwardness, one surely becomes aware of the religious - and of the leap. — Soren Kierkegaard

When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near it. You may repent not having seen it, but you can never repent having seen it. — Thomas Jefferson

Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes. — Emily Bronte

In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting , to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself. — G.K. Chesterton

The same goes for Edward Monkford. Yes, based on what you've told me, it seems Emma was the real narcissist, not him. But there's no doubting he's an extreme controller. What happens when a controller comes up against someone who's out of control? The combination could be explosive. — J.P. Delaney

It is not about never doubting, it is about coming out on the other side with twice the faith you had going into your doubt. — Beth Moore

Are the atoms of the dextroacid (tartaric) grouped in the spirals of a right-hand helix or situated at the angles of an irregular tetrahedron, or arranged in such or such particular unsymmetrical fashion? We are unable to reply to these questions. But there can be no reason for doubting that the grouping of the atoms has an unsymmetrical arrangement with a non-superimposable image. It is not less certain that the atoms of the laevo-acid realize precisely an unsymmetrical arrangement of the inverse of the above. — Louis Pasteur

If you doubt, you fall, you fail, you die. Do not doubt. — Shaun Hick

The people who defend their initial reactions the most are highly-confident, educated people. If a smart person has a strong initial reaction to something, it is very difficult for him to change his mind. Why? He feels that he is smart, which gives him confidence in his choices. Instead of doubting himself, he will defend his position, possibly with a compelling argument. A person who is not as confident in his intellectual ability will not have the same confidence level and will keep more of an open mind. The person with less confidence thinks he has something to learn, whereas the person with hubris thinks he has something to teach. — Michael Angelo Costa

For agnosticism is, in a sense, what I am preaching. I do not wish to reduce the sceptical element in your minds. I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else. — C.S. Lewis

To any survivor who may be doubting whether what they've experienced is truly abuse, remember that emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse will never be, and should never be, considered part of the messy equation of a normal relationship. As both metal health professionals and survivors can attest to, the traumatic highs and lows of being with a narcissist, a sociopath, or a psychopath are not the natural highs and lows of regular relationships. That suggestion is quite damaging to society and to survivors all around the world. — Shahida Arabi

I am not frightened of my beliefs. If there is a God who is threatening me with damnation because I don't believe in Him, so be it. I've lived my life in conscience, and I will suffer damnation willingly in conscience against a tyrannical God who would damn me because, on the basis of the intelligence He gave me, I have come to a conclusion doubting His existence, and I will continue to be a skeptic all of my life. — Alan M. Dershowitz

Sometime you have to stop worrying, wondering, and doubting. Have faith that things will work out, maybe not how you planned, but just how it's meant to be. — Drake

It seems to me that had I not known Dostoevsky or Nietzsche or Freud or X or Z, I should have thought just as I did, and that I found in them rather an authorization than an awakening. Above all, they taught me to cease doubting, to cease fearing my thoughts, and to let those thoughts lead me to those lands that were not uninhabitable because after all I found them already there . — Andre Gide

In spite of the Puritan-Yankee equation of virtue with well-being, Negroes had excellent reasons for doubting that money was made or kept by any very striking adherence to the Christian virtues; it certainly did not work that way for black Christians. — James Baldwin

Debating, doubting, or rejecting the basic scientific facts about climate change in the face of the overwhelming evidence and overwhelming scientific opinion will not change those facts. — Bernie Sanders

The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training. — Anatole France

Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God. — Jean Anouilh

A Marathon is not about running, it is about salvation. We spend so much of our lives doubting ourselves, thinking we're not good enough, not strong enough, not made of the right stuff. The Marathon is an opportunity for redemption. "Opportunity," because the outcome is uncertain. "Opportunity," because it is up to you, and only you, to make it happen; only you can turn your farfetched dream into a reality. — Dean Karnazes

I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath. — Rene Descartes

Only surrendered Christians will make an impact on our world. The world does not need any more lukewarm Christians, or lazy Christians, or quarrelsome Christians, or doubting Christians, or prideful Christians. — Billy Graham

Doubt not without hoping, hope not without doubting (free after Seneca) — Marcus Annaeus Seneca

Belief and doubt are living attitudes, and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing is, is continuing to act as if it were not. — William James

I think one of the biggest reasons people have difficulty believing in God is because they don't understand Him. You often hear doubting comments like, 'If there is a God then why this and why that and how could He allow ... ?' Perhaps if people were to invest true, sincere effort getting to know Him they'd discover a mindful Father molding his children for a higher purpose. Because, like it or not, believe it or not, agree with Him or not, He is God. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Racism is not simply about one man's irrational hatred of another but his self-hatred, doubting his own moral goodness and purpose. — Michael R. French

Shakespeare 'never owned a book,' a writer for the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless, but it is probably that what is lacking is the evidence, not the apparel or the books. — Bill Bryson

But we are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret. For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. It would be at once his sheath and his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love. For the good of mankind, and for the honor and glory of God. — Bram Stoker

I refused to accept anything, doubted everything. So, doubting everything, I had to find something that had not existed before, something I had not thought of before. Any idea that came to me, the thing would be to turn it around and try to see it with another set of senses. — Marcel Duchamp

But is it really possible to please the world!' says some doubting reader. It is indeed. Nay, it is not only very possible, but very easy. The ways are crooked, and sometimes foul and low. What then? A man need but crawl upon his hands and knees, know when to close his eyes and when his ears, when to stoop and when to stand upright; and if by the world is meant that atom of it in which he moves himself, he shall please it, never fear. — Charles Dickens

We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. — C.S. Lewis

Because of the womb being a central phenomenon in the feminine body, the whole psychology of woman differs: she is non-aggressive, non-inquiring, non-questioning, non-doubting, because all of those things are part of aggression. She will not take the initiative; she simply waits - and she can wait infinitely. — Rajneesh

Sometimes I doubt and sometimes I believe. And I like not making myself believe when I am doubting, and not making myself doubt when I am believing. Surely neither God nor Accident need my consistency. — Hugh Prather

So I am praying while not knowing how to pray. I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting. — Henri Nouwen

Simply put, if you are not doubting yourself or not thinking of other things that you could be doing instead of the task at hand, you're probably not working hard enough — Dos Remedios, Robert

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

In the end we must be merciful to the fallen, show grace to struggling, and be patient with the doubting. But when God's Word is clear we must not-and we cannot-back up, back off, back down, back out, or backslide from the truth. — Rick Warren

The mind God is looking for in man is a doubting, questioning mind, not a dogmatic mind; dogmatic reasoning is wrong reasoning. Dogmatic reason ties a huge rock to a man's foot and stops him forever from advancing. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

For example, I can doubt that 2 + 2 = 4; however, my doubting does not change the equation. When I test out that formula and find that it is true, then that becomes my reality. How can anything become real until it is tested in the crucible of doubt? — David W. Earle

We are but skin about a wind, with muscles clenched against mortality. We sleep in a long reproachful dust against ourselves. We are full to the gorge with our own names for misery. Life, the pastures in which the night feeds and prunes the cud that nourishes us to despair. Life, the permission to know death. We were created that the earth might be made sensible of her inhuman taste; and love that the body might be so dear that even the earth should roar with it. Yes, we who are full to the gorge with misery should look well around, doubting everything seen, done, spoken, precisely because we have a word for it, and not its alchemy. — Djuna Barnes

The corridor was still empty of all the feet in sad generations seeking water. yet the eyes unseeing clenched like teeth not disbelieving doubting even the absence of pain shin ankle knee the long invisible flowing of the stair-railing where a misstep in the darkness filled with sleeping Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury door I am not afraid only Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury geting so far ahead sleeping I will sleep fast when I door Door door It was empty too, the pipes, the porcelain, the stained quiet walls, the throne of contemplation. — William Faulkner

It was only natural that the intellectuals who questioned the necessity of American purpose did not rush from Cambridge and New Haven to inflict their doubts about American power and goals upon the nation's policies. So people like Riesman, classic intellectuals, stayed where they were while the new breed of thinkers-doers, half of academe, half of the nation's think tanks and of policy planning, would make the trip, not doubting for a moment the validity of their right to serve, the quality of their experience. They were men who reflected the post-Munich, post-McCarthy pragmatism of the age. One had to stop totalitarianism, and since the only thing the totalitarians understood was force, one had to be willing to use force. They justified each decision to use power by their own conviction that the Communists were worse, which justified our dirty tricks, our toughness. — David Halberstam

Is this life?'Alice wondered, not doubting that the question was original and all her own. 'Is it life to spend your time imagining things that aren't so, and never will be? Beautiful things happen to other people; why should I be the only one they never can happen to? — Booth Tarkington

The starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason. — Georg Hermes

When you're struggling, or doubting, or fearful, or feel as if your foundation has crumbled, don't ever underestimate the power of praise! Don't just think about it. Do it. Pull out all the stops. Make praise your first response to fearful situations in your life. God wants us to praise Him at all times, but especially when we are afraid or discouraged. When we do, not only will He take away our fear, but He will also give us joy (Psalm 34:1-5). Fear will tell you things that are not God's truth for your life. Fear denies that God's presence is powerful and fully active in your life. It cancels all hope and faith in God's desire to work in your behalf. But the truth is that faith, prayer, praise, and the Word of God will conquer your every fear. — Stormie O'martian

Count on the strength of your own godly attributes, and you will grow lax in your duties for Christ. Knowing you are weak keeps you from wandering too far from Him. When you see that your own cupboard is bare and everything you need is in His, you will go often to Him for supplies. But a soul who thinks he can take care of himself will say, "I have plenty and to spare for a long time. Let the doubting soul pray; my faith is strong. Let the weak go to God for help; I can manage fine on my own." What a sad state of affairs, to suppose that we no longer need the moment-by-moment sustaining grace of God.
Not only does overestimating the strength of our own goodness make us shun God's help, but it also makes us foolhardy and venturesome. You who boast about your spirituality are likely to put yourselves in all kinds of dangerous situations, then brag that you can handle them. — William Gurnall

How vain, I say, it is to expect demonstration and certainty in things not capable of it; and refuse assent to very rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and clear truths, because they cannot be made out so evident as to surmount every the least (I will not say reason, but) pretence of doubting. — John Locke

At times one wanders, doubting the facts, even when one has discovered the secrets of the good life. To be sure, my solution is not the ideal.
But when you don't like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you don't have any choice, do you? What can one do to become
another?Impossible. One would have to cease being anyone, forget oneself for someone else, at least once.But how? Don't bear down too hard on me.
I am like that old beggar who wouldn't let go of my hand one day on a cafe terrace: Oh, sir,he said, its not just that I am no good, but you lose
track of the light.Yes, we have lost track of the light, the mornings, the holy innocence of those who forgive themselves. — Albert Camus

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

Great. Okay. That, uh ... was easier than I thought."
Jack cocked his head. Wait a second ... He couldn't decide if he was pissed or really impressed. He hooked a finger into the waistband of the workout pants she'd changed into and pulled her closer. "Did you fake me out with those tears, Cameron?"
She peered up at him, defiantly, seemingly outraged by the suggestion. "Are you kidding? What, after the day I've had, I'm not entitled to a few tears? Sheesh."
Jack waited.
"This wedding is very important to me
I can't believe you're even doubting me. Honestly, Jack, the tears were real."
He waited some more. She would talk eventually. They always did.
Cameron shifted under the weight of his stare. "Okay, fine. Some of the tears were real." She looked him over, annoyed. "You are really good at that."
He grinned. "I know. — Julie James

Success on a cosmic level completely eludes me. I'm deeply suspicious of things being too good. It's part of my superstition, I think, to generate pain in order to give the illusion of gain. I'm not saying I reject success, but honestly, I don't quite know how to deal with it. It's an old feeling: As soon as you have the thing you've been going after all your life, that reasonable degree of security, you start kicking against it, doubting it. — Hugh Laurie

You believe by doubting and you doubt by believing; yet this state too is not the final one. — Stanislaw Lem

I was full of doubts, of course, not a particularly bad way to be, but I didn't know that. Doubting so much made me suffer, but I could have saved myself the anxiety and simply doubted, without any problem. I was unaware that to doubt is to write. Marguerite Duras would say so in 1995, toward the end of her days: I can say what I like, but I shall never know why people write and how it is people don't write. In life, there comes a time, and I think it is total, that we cannot escape, where we doubt everything: that doubt is writing. — Enrique Vila-Matas