Intellectual Humility Quotes

“The recognition of knowledge and the risks associated with its absence highlights the importance of our intellectual humility and the danger of ignorance that renders us vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. ("Alert. High noon.")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We need to enter the conversation willing to be wrong, willing to admit the limits of our own knowledge, willing to reconsider our evidence, sources, and premises. That is self-skepticism.”
― Patricia Roberts-Miller, Demagoguery and Democracy

“Weak and narrow are the powers implanted in the limbs of men; many the woes that fall on them and blunt the edge of thought; short is the measure of the life in death through which they toil; then are they borne away, like smoke they vanish into air, and what they dream they know is but the little each hath stumbled on in wandering about the world; yet boast they all that they have learned the whole—vain fools! for what that is, no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, nor can it be conceived by mind of man. Thou, then, since thou hast fallen to this place, shalt know no more than human wisdom may attain.”
― Empedocles

“Let us resolve to have a politics shot through with doubt, so that, if it
ever comes time to do murder for our politics, our very opinions about
politics will make us hesitate, long and hard, before pulling the trigger.
Let us be meta-rational about our politics, and recognize that this is an
area where we humans have constantly gotten things wrong, and where
we have constantly killed and died in vain. Let us adopt a world-view that
accords well with our well-known human failings. Let us tell ourselves—
hopefully with all the allure of an ironclad certitude—that we are prone to
being wrong, and that it is ghastly to kill for a mistake.

With others in the same position, we can share a bond of camaraderie,
regardless of our particular conclusions. We can know the future may
make fools of us all, and that in all probability it will. But we don’t know
just how the future will do it, and anyway, we are still permitted to believe,
as long as we do it modestly. If our beliefs are to be overthrown by something
better, that happy event will arrive only because you and I have
earnestly fought the good fight in the present. And it’s a fight in which, at
any rate, we can now join sincerely and without fear.”
― Jason Kuznicki, Technology and the End of Authority: What Is Government For?

“A little more listening to understand, a little less trying to convince, and a lot more intellectual humility would do everyone a world of good.”
― Tania Israel

“It is said that there comes a point in every mathematics student's education when he hears himself saying to the teacher, "I think I understand"-- and that's the point at which he has hit a wall. Making sure that all gifted students hit their own personal walls is crucial for developing the empathy with the rest of the world. When they see their less lucky peers struggle academically, they need to be able to say "I know how it feels,"-- and be telling the truth.”
― Charles Murray, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality

“Admittedly, I advance some ambitious theories of my own in this book.
But I must stress that I consider them provisional, and I would urge you
to consider whether I might be mistaken. Please, I would ask, consider
that I might be mistaken particularly if my book makes you feel really,
really good inside. Feelings of exactly this type, shared between author
and reader, seem likely to have led the entire discipline of political philosophy
systematically astray for much of its history. Do not trust them.”
― Jason Kuznicki, Technology and the End of Authority: What Is Government For?

“It is a necessary condition of rationality that a man shall formulate his beliefs in such a way that it is clear what evidence would be evidence against them and that he shall lay himself open to criticism and refutation ... But to foreclose on tolerance is precisely to cut oneself off from such criticism and refutation. It is gravely to endanger one's own rationality by not admitting one's own fallibility.”
― Alasdair MacIntyre

“This is the secret of the spirit, not disclosed to reason: the adaptation of the mind to what is sacred, intellectual humility in the presence of the supreme. The mind surrenders to the mystery of spirit, not in resignation but in love.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, Thunder in the Soul: To Be Known By God

“The words from all of them hold absurd importance, but… don't be too impressed or shocked by these names. Nietzsche, for example, in his "Twilight of the Idols" weaves a series of critiques against a 'certain' philosopher from nearly two thousand five hundred years ago… as if the evolution of consciousness were not occurring gradually and supported by multidisciplinarity and cooperation among sciences and technology...”
― Raydrich Rocha, Consciência: Delírios e Galopes

“True wisdom thrives in open minds; those who tune only to their own frequency become white-noise prisoners.”
― Stewart Stafford