Quotes · Skopia

8 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Intellectual humility✕clear

Courtroom speech · Speech

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment, to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure-that is all agnosticism means.

Clarence Darrow

1925

★ 1.9

Lecture · Philosophical literature

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

Discourses · 108

★ 1.9

But where's the man, who counsel can bestow, Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?

1711

★ 1.9

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

1944

★ 3.5

"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken." I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every court house, and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States. I should like to have every court begin, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that we may be mistaken."

1951

★ 3.5

Poem · Religious literature · Epic poem

The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew.

Paradise Regained · 1671

★ 3.8

He who knows most, knows best how little he knows.

Thomas Jefferson

1812

★ 4.7

Courtroom speech · Speech · Philosophical literature

I know that I do not know.

Plato, Apology · 399 BC

★ 8.1