Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
What it means
Doubt works against us like a traitor on our own side. Because we are afraid to try, we lose good things we could often have won.
The loss Lucio points to isn’t failure. It’s the chances never taken, the good that was within reach and went unclaimed because fear spoke first.
The context
In Measure for Measure, Angelo, ruling Vienna in the Duke’s absence, has sentenced a young man, Claudio, to death. Lucio comes to the nunnery to ask Claudio’s sister Isabella, a novice nun, to plead with Angelo for her brother’s life.
Isabella hesitates: “Alas, what poor ability’s in me / To do him good?” Lucio tells her, “Assay the power you have.” “My power? Alas, I doubt,” she replies, and this is his answer. He sends her to Angelo, and she says, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Why it matters
Doubt usually feels like caution, a sensible pause. Lucio’s line names what it often is: the voice that talks us out of trying before we know what we could do.
It’s worth remembering in small moments as well as big ones: the conversation you don’t start, the idea you don’t share, the request you don’t make. Isabella’s answer is a good model. She doesn’t need to feel sure; she only needs to go and see what she can do.
About William Shakespeare
English playwright, poet and actor, 1564–1616
William Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, and was baptised on 26 April 1564. Sometime between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer and part-owner of a playing company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men.
He wrote most of his known works between 1589 and 1613: some 39 plays, 154 sonnets and three long narrative poems. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. Around 1613 he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died on 23 April 1616.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene 4, c. 1603–1604.
The full passage:
Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.
We matched the words against the Project Gutenberg text of the play, Act I, Scene 4. Shakespeare wrote them as three lines of verse, given as the passage; the quote runs them together as one sentence. They are spoken by Lucio, a character in the play, not by Shakespeare in his own voice. We last checked this on 7 November 2026.