A Quote by Denis Diderot

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

Denis Diderot

Quote Topics

First First Step Scepticism Step Towards Truth

Quote Author

Denis Diderot
French - Editor
October 5, 1713 - July 31, 1784

Scepticism is the first step toward truth.

Denis Diderot

Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth.

Jeremy Paxman

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

Thomas Merton

To bring one's self to believe in a truth that has just dawned upon one is the first step towards progress; to persuade others is the second.

Louis Pasteur

A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence scepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.

Denis Diderot

When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first time you are able to see things as they are - not as you would like them to be. And when you are capable of knowing the facts of life, you become capable of knowing the truth. The facility of life is the first step towards truth. And ego is the most falsifying agent.

Rajneesh

Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

Bertrand Russell

Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence.

Daniel Barenboim

There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.

William James

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

Denis Diderot

It changes your life, the pursuit of truth, if you know that you have tried to find the truth and gone past the first apparent truth towards the real truth. It's very, it's very exciting.

Ben Bradlee

Forgiveness does not mean that we suppress anger; forgiveness means that we have asked for a miracle: the ability to see through mistakes that someone has made to the truth that lies in all of our hearts. Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness. Attack thoughts towards others are attack thoughts towards ourselves. The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive.

Marianne Williamson

Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is too often believed that a person in his progress towards perfection passes from error to truth; that when he passes on from one thought to another, he must necessarily reject the first. But no error can lead to truth. The soul passing through its different stages goes from truth to truth, and each stage is true; it goes from lower truth to higher truth.