Quotes About Skepticism

Cronkite was always one step short of disillusionment.

Your grandmother sent me to church every day, and it did me no harm. It was in church that I was converted to atheism. Also, it's a wise hedge. I myself might take it up on my deathbed, just in case.

We live in a nation of ignoramuses. The average American knows nothing about science. A man asked me once if the stars went away when the sun rose, or if they were still there but you just couldn't see them. He was a stockbroker I had the misfortune of employing, a man who made over one hundred thousand dollars a year! Well, I took my investments away from him, damn quick! And then the market climbed five hundred points.

I don't trust them but I'm learning to use them.

For somehow this disease inheres in tyranny, never to trust one's friends.

Every tale is not to be believed.

They that know how to suspect, without exposing or hurting themselves, till honesty comes to be more in fashion, can never suspect too much.

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.

A liar will not be believed even when he speaks the truth.

No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth

I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.

When you find that people are not telling you the truth---look out!

Nobody believes in magicians any more, nobody believes that anyone can come along and wave a wand and turn you into a frog. But if you read in the paper that by injecting certain glands scientists can alter your vital tissues and you'll develop froglike characteristics, well, everybody would believe that.

That's the curious part about speaking the truth. No one does believe it.

Truth is seldom romantic.

always bear in mind that the person who speaks may be lying

No," said Miss Marple. "You believed what he said. It really is very dangerous to believe people. I never have for years.

Sometimes I think there are people who only read books in the hope of finding mistakes in them.

Oh, my friend, have I not said to you all along that I have no proofs. It is one thing to know that a man is guilty, it is quite another matter to prove him so. And, in this case, there is terribly little evidence. That is the whole trouble.

But I always find it prudent to suspect everybody just a little. What I say is, you really never know, do you?

He, of course, is a liar, but that doesn't really matter because, if you know liars are liars, it comes to the same thing.

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

W: Nobody's so gullible as scientists. All the phony mediums say so. Can't quite see why. J: Oh, yes, it would be so. They think they know, you see. That's always dangerous. ~Wharton; Jessop

It's very dangerous to believe people, I haven't for years.