Quotes About Skepticism

You see I think everything's terrible anyhow. Everybody thinks so--the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!

Well I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything

Wilson shook his head. His eyes narrowed and his mouth widened slightly with the ghost of a superior 'Hm!'.

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual There!—yet

Technically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing.

Hypnosis was a tool that Dick had distrusted and seldom used, for he knew that he could not always summon up the mood in himself—he had once tried it on Nicole and she had scornfully laughed at him.

As our credulity switched back to her she leaned forward with enthusiasm. 'You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man.' She narrowed her eyes and shivered.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away.

Science is based on nothing other than what-ifs, and skepticism with regard to the preconceived notions that make up the material world.

Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.

Existo desde el principio del mundo y, desde entonces, soy un ironista.

Pertenezco a una generación que ha heredado el descreimiento en la fe cristiana y que ha creado en sí misma un descreimiento en todas las demás fes.

To explain is to disbelieve.

Nunca duvidei que todos me traíssem; e pasmei sempre quando me traíram.

To go from the phantoms of faith to the ghosts of reason is merely to change cells. Art, if it frees us from the abstract idols of old, should also free us from magnanimous ideas and social concerns, which are likewise idols.

Si odio algo, es a un reformista. Un reformista es un hombre que ve los males superficiales del mundo y se propone curarlos agravando los fundamentales.

Não me digas que me queres Pois não sei acreditar. No mundo há muitas mulheres Mas mentem todas a par.

Do not make the infantile mistake of asking the meaning of things and words. Nothing has any meaning.

Trazem-me a fé como um embrulho fechado numa salva alheia. Querem que o aceite, mas que o não abra. Trazem-me a ciência, como uma faca num prato, com que abrirei as folhas de um livro de páginas brancas. Trazem-me a dúvida como o pó dentro de uma caixa; mas para quem e trazem a caixa, se ela não tem senão pó?

To dodge the rules and say useless things sums up the essentially modern attitude.

Is it life?' he answered.'I would rather be without it' he said, ' for there is a queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, [...] It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like red-bars and foreign bacon.

Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.

I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.

We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge.