Top 40 Doubtful Quotes

Indeed, it is measure of how little we know about Cleopatra that the only images of her are either the coins she struck, bearing very unflattering official portraits of her, or some doubtful busts, which may be of other women imitating her coiffure.

Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.

Try this experiment: Pick a famous movie – ‘Casablanca,’ say – and summarize the plot in one sentence. Is that plot you just described the thing you remember most about it? Doubtful. Narrative is a necessary cement, but it disappears from memory.

I think of myself as somebody who, in a moment-to-moment way, I’m quite happy. But I think I am a bit doubtful and wary of true happiness, and, like a lot of my friends, there’s been a good degree of self-sabotage.

The Vietnam War and the Iraq war, in different ways, both made me feel like I could not not address them. I’m very doubtful about the usefulness of poetry to do that.

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.

What we still haven’t done is really learned and embraced our history. When we do that, we’ll no longer be doubtful and fearful that we are weak and incomplete.

I felt more doubtful than usual with ‘Goon Squad,’ because I knew that the book’s genre wasn’t easily named – Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? – and I worried that its lack of a clear category would count against it. My hopes for it were pretty modest.

It may be doubtful, at first, whether a person is an enemy or friend. Meat, if not properly digested, becomes poison; But poison, if used rightly, may turn medicinal.

Delaying and withholding tactics, red herrings, partial and doubtful outcomes are stock in trade for fiction writers, especially crime writers.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

I didn’t want to do music. I was very doubtful. I was like, ‘Oh my God. No one wants to hear a teen mom rapper.’

In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.

And we’ve become very doubtful of our information sources, because they’re all controlled by these huge multilateral corporations.

As a person… I’m a little more doubtful, introspective and analytical.

People expected ‘Jennifer’s Body’ to make so much money. But I was doubtful. The movie is about a man-eating, cannibalistic lesbian cheerleader, and that pretty much eliminates middle America. It’s obviously a girl-power movie, but it’s also about how scary girls are. Girls can be a nightmare.

All those who offer an opinion on any doubtful point should first clear their minds of every sentiment of dislike, friendship, anger or pity.

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

My experiences have shown me that when an opportunity bigger than you comes along and you feel unprepared and doubtful, it is important to permit those emotions and let that energy drive you and inspire you to move forward.

Are we a Christian nation now? It’s doubtful. But did we start out as one? Without question.

I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all, and for a poor woman a very doubtful happiness.

Sure, investors do tend to overreact, but they are investing real money based on doubtful information. Complacency or a wrong move sees their money literally vanish into thin air.

I’m not doubtful that I am doing what I should be doing – writing for theater – and that I’m doing it in a way no one else does it. Whether anyone else is paying attention or anyone else cares, I’m still ambivalent about that. It’s still an open question.

In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.

In doubtful cases the more liberal interpretation must always be preferred.

Pay attention to how you think and speak, and if it turns out that you’re sounding snide or crappy or doubtful, make the conscious decision to change.

The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles.

Increasingly, stars are recruited from the ranks of professional models, with the result that today’s starlets are better dressed and better groomed than ever before, though it is doubtful if they are better actresses.

Obviously, a theatrical masterpiece needs more than a plot; many television shows are nothing but plot, and it is doubtful that they will stand the test of time. But I also don’t think that making fun of plot or acting like we’re all somehow ‘above’ structure is such a good idea.

I knew it to be very doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through the whole of this week I had in view the probable contingency that we should not decide at the critical moment to support France.

The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of the horse barn, still writing those doubtful poems where too much emotion clashed with too many words.

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton’s Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency.

You should not forget that without all the work in law and economics, a great part of which has been supported by the John M. Olin Foundation, it is doubtful whether the importance of my work would have been recognized.

A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.

I would love to go on ‘MasterChef’. But while I really like cooking, I’m doubtful anyone would ever want to pay for what I’d cooked.

It’s doubtful that any fiction worth reading has been produced on a computer running Windows Vista.

Ivanka was asking her work contacts at the White House to write to her at her private email – the exact offense the Trumps had lambasted Hillary Clinton for during the general election. Would anyone chant ‘Lock her up!’ about Ivanka’s private server? Doubtful.

I am doubtful about reuniting with David Dhawan.

Beware prejudices. They are like rats, and men’s minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out.

For the last half of my life I have had the doubtful benefit of a brother whose literary reputation is much greater than my own.