Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

A man who has humility will have acquired in the last reaches of his beliefs the saving doubt of his own certainty.

We are all hypocrites but introspective people use this insight to moderate their self-righteousness. There’s an inverse relationship between introspection and intolerance.

A certain degree of intellectual humility is a good thing.

You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.

The more readily we admit the possibility of our own cherished convictions being mixed with error, the more vital and helpful whatever is right in them will become; and no error is so conclusively fatal as the idea that God will not allow us to err, though He has allowed all other men to do so.

The point here is ... to be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

We must be fully committed, but we must also be aware at the same time that we might possibly be wrong. People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one...is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.

Never presume that just because you disagree with an idea that you must be correct.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn't with me as against me.

It is only through the opposition of ideas that we can learn to be self-critical, to work towards intellectual humility.

The hardest thing in the world, I now know, is to hold in your head that it is okay to think that you are right, but not to think so necessarily because everyone who disagrees with you is wrong or stupid or duped or bad.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right

Being unbiased is a lot like being humble: as soon as you think you are, you aren’t. Neither are a finite state of being but a continuous struggle to not allow our perspectives poison our opinions.

Judge Learned Hand once observed that “the spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure it is right.” If we don’t accept others’ good faith and the limitations of our own expertise—if we are so quick to attack others’ errors that we forget how often we too are wrong—the enterprise of free speech is fraught, and the spirit of liberty of which it is part is at peril.

I think it's very important to keep in the back of your mind: 'What if I'm wrong?'

None are so fallible as those who are sure they're right.

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.

I'd ask people to keep in mind the idea that if you really understand something, it's even more important for you to consider the possibility of your wrongness. Even if it takes someone dumber than you to point that out.

I doubt about myself. I think doubts are good in life. The people who don't have doubts I think only two things-arrogance or not intelligence.

What should we think of someone who never admits error, never entertains doubt but adheres unflinchingly to the same ideas all his life, regardless of new evidence? Doubt and skepticism are signs of rationality. When we are too certain of our opinions, we run the risk of ignoring any evidence that conflicts with our views. It is doubt that shows we are still thinking, still willing to reexamine hardened beliefs when confronted with new facts and new evidence.

Certainty is the enemy of mankind. If you're certain about everything, you have the Inquisition, you have Nazis and you have - that certainty is something to be guarded about.

The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.

No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.