Timothy Harold Parks Quotes

I go around the room and ask people, 'What do you think?'

My only weapon is the question.

An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with explanation, with conclusions. Nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion.

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.

If you haven't doubted, you probably haven't thought very hard about what you believe.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

Readers forget that one can critique yet still admire.

Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.

The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

Whatever we think about and question a lot becomes questionable.

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.

History is the great propagator of doubt.

To philosophize is to doubt.

Don't you believe what you read.

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

I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)

I don't believe in anything you have to believe in.

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.

The thing is, not to stop questioning.

William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.

I am all in favor of the skeptical mind. Do not believe anything unless you have experienced it. Do not believe anything - go on questioning, however long it takes.

It's OK to have beliefs, just don't believe in them.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.