Quotes About Scepticism

Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold-blooded criticism, founded on a shallow interpretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own; a most irreverent propensity to thrust Providence aside, and substitute one's self in its awful place,—out of these, and other motives as miserable as these, comes your idea of duty!

Scepticism is a girl's number six

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

the scepticism of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they have actually had personal experience of them.

...you do yourself no favour if you let your sense of doubt-mistrust-scepticism to rise up within you to the point where you must look every gift horse in the mouth...

It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. Perhaps - perhaps.

As long as scepticism is based on a sound understanding of science it is invaluable, for that is how science progresses. But poor criticism can lead those who are unfamiliar with the science involved into doubting everything about climate change predictions.

What of Art? -It is a malady. --Love? -An Illusion. --Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. --You are a sceptic. -Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. --What are you? -To define is to limit.

You are a sceptic. Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith. What are you? To define is to limit.

Levin knew his brother and the workings of his mind: he knew that his scepticism came not because life was easier for him without faith. His religious beliefs had been shaken step by step by the theories of modern science concerning the phenomena of the universe; and so Levin knew that this present return was not a valid, reasoned one but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in a desperate hope of recovery.

I must say I am a little impatient about the American scepticism. The event is what will decide all.

Scepticism and pessimism aren't synonymous. Scepticism calls for pessimism when optimism is excessive. But it also calls for optimism when pessimism is excessive.

The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- LUXURY, scepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

For a good many years now I have practised at the bar; and, if that fact offers no guarantee of unimpeachable veracity it at least furnishes presumptive evidence of a fairly robust moral epidermis. I may not be believed; but the frankest scepticism will leave me undisturbed and unabashed.

Scepticism may be evidence of a healthy and independent mindset; but conspiracism is a virus that feeds off insecurity and bitterness.

Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.

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.

It was a question of steering Christian dogma between the Scylla of pantheism and the Charybdis of materialism and its logical conclusion, scepticism.

Voltaire was soon turned, with Catherine's encouragement, into a patron saint for the secular Russian aristocracy. Voltairianism, vaguely signifying rationalism, scepticism and reformism, became her official ideology. Almost all of Voltaire was translated into Russian; no library was deemed complete if it did not contain a collection of Voltaire's works in the original French.

But in Kemal, perhaps because some scepticism in him – an underlying boredom with government – kept him from a full addiction to power, continual drinking became alcoholism.