Christopher Hitchens Quotes

My personal philosophy is, you can be sure of nothing.

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

There are no indisputable truths.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

But is all this true?" said Brutha. Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork." "You mean you don't KNOW it's true?" said Brutha. "I THINK it might be," said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

You believe by doubting and you doubt by believing; yet this state too is not the final one.

Doubt is not a very agreeable status, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.

Maybe I don't believe things myself, as well. Truth is such a transient thing.

I believe that, too, it's hard to believe that anybody could not believe that.

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Faith is Doubt.

There is more truth in honest doubt, Believe me, than in all the creeds.

Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

The greater the knowledge, the greater the doubt.

Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly false).

To a certain extent all philosophers have been involved in a systematic questioning that undermines confidence and certainty. Philosophy as a whole unleashed skeptical forces which, outside of the tightly controlled environment of a rigorous philosophical debate, led a lot of people to throw their hands up in despair and think 'what's the point?'. A lot of the public perception of philosophy is that it leaves you with no answers, and more confused than you were at the beginning.

I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.