John Patrick Shanley Quotes

Accepting that the world is full of uncertainty and ambiguity does not and should not stop people from being pretty sure about a lot of things.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Conviction was not, courage failed, and truth was something to be doubted of.

A leader with no doubts leads badly.

You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things... It doesn't frighten me.

Anyone can believe when God is already moving. But real faith is when you step out when it seems that God is not moving.

There can be no faith without risk.

Doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction.

Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.

Faith, to be faith, must center around something that is not known. Faith, to be faith, must go beyond that for which there is confirming evidence. Faith, to be faith, must go into the unknown. Faith, to be faith, must walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness. If everything has to be known, if everything has to be explained, if everything has to be certified, then there is no need for faith. Indeed, there is no room for it.

doubt seems the only purity for those who are too fervent to deny, and too lucid to affirm.

To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched. To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do any thing that is worth the doing.

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.

In today’s world of fear and uncertainty, every child should have one class period a day to dive within himself and experience the field of silence - bliss - the enormous reservoir of energy and intelligence that is deep within all of us. This is the way to save the coming generation.

One longs for the presence of a leader like Lincoln, who openly admitted his doubts and as openly preserved his commitment.

Faith is the willingness to look foolish.

Doubt is the vestibule of faith.

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

I still doubt it will work." "You'd doubt the sun's rising if you weren't proven wrong each day," Raoden said with a smile.

I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Of course as soon as I say something or write it that sounds like I believe it, and really I'm never entirely sure.

Things I don't understand don't destroy my faith in the things I do understand.

Belief is tricky because left to its own devices, it can court a kind of surety, an unquestioning allegiance that fears doubt and destroys difference.