Michel de Montaigne Quotes

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.

Inquiry is fatal to certainty.

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom.

We'd all like to be certain of what we know, but I think the most important question is to ask yourself do you really know what you know?

By doubting we come to questioning, and by questioning we perceive the truth.

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.

We cannot begin with complete doubt.

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.

To philosophize is to doubt.

He believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing.

Que sçais-je?" (What do I know?)

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

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

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Because a truly skeptical position would be a very uncertain one.

I have always been much better at asking questions than knowing what the answers were.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

I love to doubt as well as know.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

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.

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