Nawal El Saadawi Quotes

Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.

My skepticism is strong, but my curiosity is stronger.

if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.

Doubt . . . impels a search for the truth. It opens the door to knowledge. Faith puts a lock on the door. Indeed, . . . faith anesthetizes the desire to seek knowledge and truth.

Doubting charms me not less than knowledge.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

I love to doubt as well as know.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Question everything. Your love, your religion, your passion. If you don't have questions, you'll never find answers.

I hate doubt, yet I am certain that doubt is the only way to approach anything worth believing in.

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

The first beginnings of wisdom...is to ask questions but never to answer any.

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it... Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

Unless you have the courage to doubt you will never come to know the truth.

Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

Uncertainty is a very good thing: it's the beginning of an investigation, and the investigation should never end.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

My only weapon is the question.

In philosophy you're never 100% sure. You're always undermining what you think you know. That's always been my philosophy and my intellectual ethos.