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Daily Inspiration Quote by Peter Jennings

"I was raised with the notion that it was OK to ask questions, and it was OK to say, I'm not sure. I believe, but I'm not quite so certain about the resurrection"

About this Quote

A newsroom credo smuggled into a confessional. Peter Jennings frames doubt not as a crisis but as good upbringing: a learned permission to interrogate authority and to live without airtight answers. It’s the journalist’s professional ethic translated into spiritual posture, and the phrasing does a lot of work. “It was OK” repeats like a parental refrain, suggesting a childhood inoculation against shame-based certainty. He’s not bragging about skepticism; he’s describing an environment where uncertainty is socially sanctioned.

The second sentence sharpens the blade. “I believe, but…” is a careful calibration between faith and fact, a public figure’s way of refusing the binary that American religion and American media both love to enforce: believer or atheist, with us or against us. By singling out “the resurrection,” Jennings picks Christianity’s most audacious claim, the one that turns ethics into metaphysics and story into miracle. He’s not contesting the moral center of religion; he’s admitting the evidentiary problem at the heart of its headline.

Context matters: Jennings spent decades delivering certainty in a calm voice on national television, often during moments when the country wanted simple narratives. Here, he declines that role. The subtext is a quiet rebuke to performative conviction, whether in politics, punditry, or piety. He offers a third stance: committed, inquisitive, and honest about the limits of what he can affirm. In an era that rewarded certainty as a brand, he treats doubt as a form of integrity.

Quote Details

TopicFaith
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Jennings, Peter. (2026, January 17). I was raised with the notion that it was OK to ask questions, and it was OK to say, I'm not sure. I believe, but I'm not quite so certain about the resurrection. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-raised-with-the-notion-that-it-was-ok-to-58017/

Chicago Style
Jennings, Peter. "I was raised with the notion that it was OK to ask questions, and it was OK to say, I'm not sure. I believe, but I'm not quite so certain about the resurrection." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-raised-with-the-notion-that-it-was-ok-to-58017/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I was raised with the notion that it was OK to ask questions, and it was OK to say, I'm not sure. I believe, but I'm not quite so certain about the resurrection." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-raised-with-the-notion-that-it-was-ok-to-58017/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Peter Jennings (July 29, 1938 - August 7, 2005) was a Journalist from Canada.

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