Doubt, a status between belief and disbelief, involves uncertainty or distrust or lack of sureness of an alleged fact, an action, a motive, or a decision. Doubt brings into question some notion of a perceived "reality", and may involve delaying or rejecting relevant action out of concerns for mistakes or faults or appropriateness. Some definitions of doubt emphasize the state in which the mind remains suspended between two contradictory propositions and unable to assent to either of them (compare paradox).
The concept of doubt covers a range of phenomena: one can characterise both deliberate questioning of uncertainties and an emotional state of indecision as "doubt".
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Famous quotes containing the word doubt:
““O father! O father! now, now, keep your hold,
The Erl-King has seized me—his grasp is so cold!
Sore trembled the father; he spurr’d thro’ the wild,
Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child;
He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread,
But, clasp’d to his bosom, the infant was dead.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1799–1832)
“It is no doubt possible to fly—but first you must know how to dance like an angel.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“No one can doubt the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)