"What is important is that one utilizes one's intellect and not to be 100 percent sure about one's convictions. One should always leave room for doubt"
About this Quote
Ebadi’s line is a rebuke to the kind of certainty that turns law into a weapon and conscience into a badge. Coming from a lawyer who built her career inside systems that punish dissent, “not to be 100 percent sure” isn’t a cozy celebration of open-mindedness; it’s a survival ethic and a political stance. In authoritarian settings, certainty is often the state’s favorite aesthetic: slogans, verdicts, “obvious” enemies, predetermined truths. Doubt becomes suspect because it slows the machinery.
The quote’s craft lies in how it smuggles radical humility into a profession stereotyped as combative. “Utilizes one’s intellect” implies rigor, not vibes: evidence, cross-examination, the discipline of asking what else could be true. And then Ebadi twists the blade: intellect isn’t the path to unshakable conviction; it’s the tool that keeps conviction from hardening into dogma. The target isn’t belief itself but the 100 percent posture - the refusal to admit error, the eagerness to close the case on people.
Subtextually, she’s warning that moral certainty and legal certainty aren’t the same thing. Courts demand decisions; justice demands hesitations. “Leave room for doubt” reads like a personal credo, but it’s also an argument for pluralism: if you can tolerate uncertainty in your own convictions, you can tolerate other citizens existing without being “corrected.” In Ebadi’s world, doubt isn’t weakness. It’s the last line of defense against zealotry wearing a robe.
The quote’s craft lies in how it smuggles radical humility into a profession stereotyped as combative. “Utilizes one’s intellect” implies rigor, not vibes: evidence, cross-examination, the discipline of asking what else could be true. And then Ebadi twists the blade: intellect isn’t the path to unshakable conviction; it’s the tool that keeps conviction from hardening into dogma. The target isn’t belief itself but the 100 percent posture - the refusal to admit error, the eagerness to close the case on people.
Subtextually, she’s warning that moral certainty and legal certainty aren’t the same thing. Courts demand decisions; justice demands hesitations. “Leave room for doubt” reads like a personal credo, but it’s also an argument for pluralism: if you can tolerate uncertainty in your own convictions, you can tolerate other citizens existing without being “corrected.” In Ebadi’s world, doubt isn’t weakness. It’s the last line of defense against zealotry wearing a robe.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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