Quotes About Skepticism

Don't believe everything you see on the internet

compassion, skepticism, and uncertainty rather than on dogma

do not understand Englishmen at all," Stanley wrote. "Either they suspect me of some self-interest, or they do not believe me. . . . For the relief of Livingstone I was called an impostor; for the crossing of Africa I was called a pirate." Nor was there enthusiasm in the United States for Congo colonization. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., in New York, now wanted to send Stanley off in search of the North Pole.

The most notorious liar, I am disposed to believe, tells the fair truth at least twenty times for once that he seriously and deliberately lies; and, as in the most cautious the disposition to believe is apt to prevail over that to doubt and distrust; so in those who are the most regardless of truth, the natural disposition to tell it prevails upon most occasions over that to deceive, or in any respect to alter or disguise it.

no conspiracy can survive exponential growth.

Don't trust whitey and whitey is fucking everywhere. We walked

I know a lie when I hear one.

You take every salesman that walks into this shop at his word—why not Gianluca?

I'd stopped waving to passengers in cars by then- I'd grown suspicious of people and all the complications of interior lives- so I sat and watched and rode and thought, and as soon as the bus doors opened, we all rolled out the doorand split apart like billiard balls.

It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

But seriously, if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they'd probably say they didn't. Yet that's not necessarily what they truly think. It's just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don't until they're allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never get the chance.

Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species.

Human beings sometimes interest me but I don't like them because they are not intelligent enough.

Cynicism is too easy, and it gets you nowhere.

We are marginally—but crucially—less likely to question the soundness of an article about a rationale for going to war when it comes presented beneath the neo-Gothic Cheltenham typeface of the New York Times, or to probe the coherence of a thesis defending a presidential budget when it is laid out in the sober yet sensuous columns of Le Monde's Fenway font. Brands alone dissuade us from picking sceptically at their underlying content.

Doubt is easy when it is not a matter of survival: we are as skeptical as we can afford to be, and it is easiest to be skeptical about things that do not fundamentally sustain us. It is easy to doubt the existence of a table; it is hell to doubt the legitimacy of love.

The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it.

n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" ("I have no need for that assumption

Oh, they said God was dead, all those beatniks and snooty-ass Frenchmen. Not me. I knew better. I said to them, Wait, boys! Don't break cover yet awhile. He might be faking. I mean, they thought Saddam was dead. And the novel. And Glenn Close in that last scene of Fatal Attraction. That's what I said. But did they listen? Ohh no. They went right ahead and organized God's funeral. Well, don't count your chickens before they come home to roost...

If you approach any psychic with any sort of scepticism youll see through pretty much all of it unless they happen to get lucky.

We all get stuck in our belief systems, however sensible we think they are. To me, the New Age community is particularly guilty of not testing or challenging what it claims.

it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have deceived us even once.

In order to determine whether we can know anything with certainty, we first have to doubt everything we know

Soze shook his head. "If someone checks our Internet search records, don't you think it will look suspicious that before we called the police, we checked up on the evidence?" Poe laughed mirthlessly. "We're Rose & Grave, junior. Everything we do looks suspicious.