Quotes About Skepticism

bis sneering

Ni siquiera a mí?!

Japichinu era picciotto religioso, come sosteneva il nonno Balduccio, tant'è vero che aveva persino un Patre spirituale. Solo che tanto il picciotto quanto il parrino scangiavano superstizione per religione.

I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high-whether by presidents, prime ministers, or archbishops-is inherently suspect.

It is difficult to accept how deep and wide the cover up of 9/11 actually is. The very magnitude of this cover up is enough to make many people scoff, roll their eyes or utter a sentence including a phrase such as "conspiracy theorist".

I do not want to believe everything I read in the press. The papers, particularly the online editions, publish a lot of false news.

The nicer I am, the more people think I'm lying.

If you suspect a problem, there is a problem. Don't let them get away with even the very first lie. Be vigilant.

Las mentiras de los poderosos nos hacen desconfiar de gobiernos y grandes empresas.

Las mentiras de los teóricos de la conspiración suscitan dudas sobre la honradez de quienes denuncian injusticias, aun cuando estén diciendo la verdad.

Our public discourse appears permanently riven by conspiracy theories.

Words like "God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal," or they will unmake our world.

every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which it has no evidence.

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.

In fact, atheism is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist.

It is worth remembering that if God created the world and all things in it, he created smallpox, plague, and filariasis.

we are confronted by people who hold beliefs for which there is no rational justification

For many years, I have been a vocal critic of religion, and I won't ride the same hobbyhorse here. I hope that I have been sufficiently energetic on this front that even my most skeptical readers will trust that my bullshit detector remains well calibrated as we advance over this new terrain.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

The young man, who intends no ill, Believes that none is intended, and therefore Acts with openness and candor: but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it.

may, notwithstanding, be questioned whether, except his bible, he ever read a book entirely through. Late in life, if any man praised a book in his presence, he was sure to ask, "Did you read it through?" If the answer was in the affirmative, he did not seem willing to believe it.

To go and see one druidical temple is only to see that it is nothing, for there is neither art nor power in it; and seeing one is quite enough.

O my dear! a fond husband is a surfeiting thing; and yet I believe most women love to be made monkeys of.