Quotes About Skepticism

insouciance, he was edgy. Why didn't he ask why Strike was there? Or did

Anomie has to be someone there, with the quote on the window and the stolen drawing and everything. But you never wanted to believe me, that that place was bad news, because of her.

Credulity is not a virtue, and investigation is not a crime.

Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

A man who trusts everyone is a fool and a man who trusts no one is a fool. We are all fools if we live long enough.

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly.

The burden of proof is now on the doubters.

You think I've been around these fuckers long enough to get comfortable enough to SLEEP ten feet away from them? Not fucking likely. (Axel)

Examine everything; not all is as it seems or as people tell you.

comic cynicism

In fact, one big lesson from Buddhism is to be suspicious of the intuition that your ordinary way of perceiving the world brings you the truth about it.

But what I knew then was that nobody-- not even my mother-- was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.

Fairy godmothers?" said the king dubiously. "We'll have a time getting that past the court council — and the bishop.

And you know what? If there is a God, and it's that same God who's so eager to have temples built in honor of his greatness, and wars fought over him, and people dropping to their knees telling him what a wonderful, magnificent being he is? If this all-powerful, all-knowing creature for some reason just can't get by without my worship? Then let him give me some proof. Or at least get over himself if I decide to go out and get some.

I don't believe in Our Dark Lord of the Underworld or the rising of the Antichrist, I don't believe in child sacrifice or wild midnight blood rituals, and I don't believe that I can call on the power of Satan to knock some cheerleader off her pyramid. Wearing black felt safe. Wearing it on my skin, the mark of something vicious, that felt right.

The first axiom of Marx Scientist is that everything they tell you is a lie. The second axiom is that it doesn't matter, since you are lying too. The third axiom is 'Kill all liars!

The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.

I'm very gullible when it comes to my own words. I believe everything I say, though I know I am a liar.

Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes.' I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name.

Never trust a cat, anyway. All they're good for is stringing tennis racquets.

I came to pray; mocking, I stay.

Early disappointments with people left Washington with a residual cynicism that was to jibe well with Hamilton's views.

If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end "that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.

his optimistic view of America's potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature.