Quotes About Scepticism

Charles] Nodier's later view was that fantasy reconciles men to their fate. Fantasy and the taste for chimeras, he wrote, are symptoms of a time of political decay and transition, when the unpleasant realities of political life are too hard to bear. They serve a useful purpose in that they give men hope when scepticism and disillusion would otherwise drive them to despair.

scepticism by means of classical arguments, the most effective means initially to promote arousal. And

Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth.

My scepticism of biography continues even though I keep doing it.

It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.

The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.

We are talking about a bet, remember, and Pascal wasn't claiming that his wager enjoyed anything but very long odds. Would you bet on God's valuing dishonestly faked belief (or even honest belief) over honest scepticism?

The reason for this double standard in our scepticism is, quite simply, that we can see and we can't echolocate.

Scepticism may be theoretically irrefutable, but even the sceptic must 'act … and live, and converse, like other men', since human nature gives him no choice.

Hobbes is not an absolutist precisely because he is an authoritarian. His scepticism about the power of reasoning, which applied no less to the 'artificial reason' of the Sovereign than to the reasoning of the natural man, together with the rest of his individualism, separate him from the rationalist dictators of his or any age. Indeed, Hobbes, without being himself a liberal, had in him more of the philosophy of liberalism than most of its professed defenders

Scepticism and cynicism about politics is so great that one of the best counters to it is what you can do at a local level.

Scepticism about the afterlife drives humankind to seek not only immortality, but also earthly happiness.

Scepticism and refusal of authority is at the heart of scientific endeavour. Scientific knowledge dictates economic possibilities

The vote reflected both the power of the Israel lobby and scepticism over Saudi support for the US following an American air strike on Libya, with some US politicians fearing Saudi Arabia might divert weapons to 'terrorists'.16

the vices and wickedness of the Secular Era, some of which still lingered, he said, in the cities of the East – irreligiosity, scepticism, occultism, depravity. And I thought of the ideas I had so casually imbibed from Julian and (indirectly) from Sam, some of which I had even begun to believe: Einsteinism, Darwinism, space travel …

I lost the ability to consider the question of predestination with necessary scepticism.

Speaking personally as a filmmaker, I think encoded in Bond are a series of values about Britain, about the world, about masculinity, about power, about the empire that I don't share. Quite the reverse. Whereas in Bourne, I think encoded is much more scepticism. There's an us and a them, and Bourne is an us, whereas Bond is working for them.

The method of this great philosopher [Kant] can serve as a pointer to the satisfying solution to our problem. Of course we don't have to slavishly adhere to Kant's form, but we must match his method to the nature of our own subject [socialism], displaying the same critical spirit. Our critique must be direct against both a scepticism that undermines all theoretical thought, and a dogmatism that relies on ready-made formulas

The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of scepticism with faith.

In government, you are pressed by the security agencies. They come to you with very good information, and they say, 'You need to do something.' So you do need the breath of scepticism, not cynicism, breathing on them.

The three main sources of scepticism are first, that not every people desires freedom; second, that democracy in certain parts of the world would be dangerous; and third, that there is little the world's democracies can do to advance freedom outside their countries.

Hinduism professes no false certitudes. Its capacity to express wonder at Creation and simultaneously scepticism about the omniscience of the Creator are unique to Hinduism. Both are captured beautifully in this verse from the 3,500-year-old Rig Veda, the Nasadiya Sukta or Creation Hymn:

your scepticism has defeated itself and become a monstrous credulity…

One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the abjectness of the credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism. — Shaw's Preface