This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Creativity requires the freedom to consider "unthinkable" alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices. Every organization, every society is under the spell of assumptions so familiar that they are never questioned, least of all by those most intimately involved." - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right." - Joseph Addison
"To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both free us from the necessity of reflection." - Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré
"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right." - Laurens van der Post
"The greatest power God gave us is the power to choose. We have the opportunity to choose whether we’re going to act or procrastinate, believe or doubt, pray or curse, help or heal. We also choose whether we’re going to be happy or whether we’re going to be sad." - Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz
"Look solely for happiness, and I doubt you'll find it. Forget about happiness, seek wisdom and goodness, and happiness will probably find you." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"Without doubt, the highest privilege of wealth is the opportunity it affords for doing good, without giving up one’s fortune." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
"If instead of considering science, one considers wisdom, man's wisdom, it is much more questionable whether as one comes down the centuries from ancient to modern times there has been a great advance in human wisdom. One is entitled to doubt that there has been any advance at all over the ages." - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
"Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room from the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge." - Napoleon Hill
"The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"There is not doubt in my mind that mental and spiritual health are the foundation of physical health, harmonious relationships, and a happy and successful life." - Norman Vincent Peale
"Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Many people may doubt that finding God is the purpose of life; but everyone can accept the idea that the purpose of life is to find happiness. I say that God is Happiness. He is Bliss. He is Love. He is Joy that will never go away from your soul. So why shouldn’t you try to acquire that Happiness? No one else can give it to you. You must continuously cultivate it yourself." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
"To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us." - Philip Massinger
"Our Reason is capable of nothing but the creation of a universal confusion and universal doubt." - Pierre Bayle
"Without the slightest doubt there is something through which material and spiritual energy hold together and are complementary. In last analysis, somehow or other, there must be a single energy operating in the world." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and some absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Reason already persuades me that I ought no less carefully to withhold my assent from matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me manifestly to be false, if I am able to find in each one some reason to doubt." - René Descartes
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things." - René Descartes
"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power... The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body... 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
"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
"Belief is better than anything else, and it is best when rapt - above paying its respects to anybody's doubt whatsoever." - Robert Frost
"You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." - Samuel Ullman
"To come directly into harmony with this reality just simply say when doubt arises, “Not two.” In this “not two” nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it a single thought is ten thousand years." - Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an
"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace where there is hatred... let me sow love. Where there is injury... pardon. Where there is doubt... faith. Where there is despair... hope. Where there is darkness... light. Where there is sadness... joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled... as to console, to be understood... as to understand; to be loved... as to love, for it is in giving... that we receive. It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned, it is in dying... that we are born to eternal life." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL
"He that hath faith hath wisdom; he that hath wisdom hath peace. He that hath no wisdom and no faith, whose soul is one of doubt, is destroyed." - Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL
"Doubt of any kind cannot be resolved except by action." - Thomas Carlyle
"A man’s religion consists, not of the many things he is in doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of, and has no need of effort for believing." - Thomas Carlyle
"Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt." - Thomas Carlyle
"Of all religions, the Christian is without doubt the one which should inspire tolerance most, although up to now the Christians have been the most intolerant of all men." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"An honest man can never surrender an honest doubt." - Walter F. Malone
"Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality. This does not mean that he doubts it as a future fact. He accepts his own death, with that of others, as inevitable; plans for it; provides for the time when he shall be out of the picture. Yet, not less today than formerly, he confronts this fact with a certain incredulity regarding the scope of its destruction." - William Ernest Hocking
"To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it." - William Hazlitt
"The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom." - Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
"Doubt the man who swears to his devotion." - Colette, pen name of Sidonse Gabriele Colette
"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand. " - Colin Powell, fully Colin Luther Powell
"A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt. If it cannot discover the claims to existence of the objects of its questioning -- and it would be miraculous if it so soon succeeded in solving so many mysteries -- it will deny them all reality, the mere formulation of the problem already implying an inclination to negative solutions. But in so doing it will become void of all positive content and, finding nothing which offers it resistance, will launch itself perforce into the emptiness of inner revere." - Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
"All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost -- the most legitimate -- passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one." - Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
"There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth." - Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler