Why It’s Better to Doubt Than to Know
I just graduated with a philosophy degree. Here’s my message to the Class of 2025.
Why it’s better to doubt than to know.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/25/graduation-speech-northwestern-doubt/
June 25, 2025
By Clary Doyle
Clary Doyle was the undergraduate student speaker at Northwestern University’s 2025 commencement. Her address to classmates has been edited lightly.
Today, I receive a degree in philosophy. Which, as many of my relatives have pointed out, means it may be a long time before I pay off my loans. So, I am both literally and figuratively indebted to Northwestern because I got to spend the past four years trying to answer questions like: What is the meaning of life? How should I live? And what is the right thing to do?
But I’ll let you in on a secret in my field: Philosophers are less concerned with finding the right answers and more concerned with asking the right questions. No one is quite as famous for this as Socrates. When the Oracle of Delphi supposedly prophesied that he was the wisest man in Athens, Socrates was shocked because he was sure that he knew nothing. He then went around all of Athens, meeting with those who called themselves wise, and asked them questions to find out what they knew. And what he discovered was that they, too, knew nothing. So, indeed, he was the wisest man, because at least he knew that he knew nothing.
I know it may seem ironic to focus on Socrates now, considering we are here receiving diplomas that signify that we know at least something. But I think the story of Socrates resonates profoundly with us today because there’s a lot we don’t know.
We don’t know what our lives will be like out in the real world, if it will be as easy to make friends with co-workers as it was with the people in our dorms, or if we will manage to land our dream jobs as doctors, actors, musicians, politicians and entrepreneurs. And even larger uncertainties loom on the horizon: Will our generation overcome climate change or will it overcome us? How will AI alter the fabric of society? Will institutions like Northwestern remain strong for years to come?
I won’t stand up here and pretend to know the answers. But I want to say something about uncertainty and about doubt, and suggest that it’s not quite as bad a thing as we make it out to be.
I grew up in a religious town, to a religious family. My entire life everyone around me championed faith — belief in the unknown and a steadfast trust that things would work out. They urged me to set my doubts aside, but I remember, even back then, my dissatisfaction with blind faith. I pestered our parish priest with questions about why we ought to do what God said, why women couldn’t be priests, and how we could know if God was real.
I came to Northwestern to find answers to the questions I felt like I wasn’t answering back home, and the first place I looked was in a small pub in Evanston, Ill. called the Celtic Knot. Every Thursday, Northwestern’s best and nerdiest would gather to debate questions like: What is the ideal political system? Is it wrong to not be vegan? Should Truman have dropped the bomb? Every week, I would come in confident with an answer, only to have that answer tested and critiqued, and I left each meeting, without fail, with more questions and more doubts.
What I learned at Northwestern was not what I expected, but essential nonetheless. I learned how to accept academic setbacks and rejections, to forgive others and myself, and I certainly learned to never underestimate the weather. But the most important thing I learned was to doubt.
At Northwestern, I did not find faith in my ideas. Instead, I was challenged by my peers, pushed to reconsider my views about morality and, importantly, I learned to be comfortable with doubt. And this is crucial because it is only if we consider that we may be wrong about some things that we could ever change our minds.
We are now in an unprecedented moment in history in which universities like ours are under attack. And why? Because some people believe that in universities we are being inculcated into the cult of science and liberal ideology. But, in fact, the real reason is because we are not being taught faith. We are not learning to blindly believe. We are learning to doubt and to question and to criticize. And, make no mistake, it is precisely this skill that is powerful and is being attacked.
Not dissimilarly, the Athenians sentenced Socrates to death for quote “corrupting the youth” because he taught his students to question and doubt. And, while they did succeed in killing Socrates, they could not keep his wisdom from spreading. Thousands of years later, we still read the Socratic dialogues, and we still believe that there is wisdom in not knowing, power in questioning and hope in the ability to change our minds.
So as you all go on to accomplish great things, remember this: None of us came to Northwestern because we already knew things. We came because we had questions. And the reason we are standing here with diplomas, leaving Northwestern, is not because we have clear answers, but because we have deep doubts.
And while the world we live in is frightening, my wish is that we embrace this aspect of our education and continue to ask questions. Graduation speeches usually end with a call to change the world, but the truth is, the world will change whether you do anything about it or not. So instead, I encourage you to do something much harder, something more important, and that is to change your minds.