Quotes About Skepticism

When I consider the question, whether there are such persons in the world as those we call witches? my mind is divided between the two opposite opinions; or rather (to speak my thoughts freely) I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as witchcraft; but at the same time can give no credit to any particular instance of it.

T]he longer you stay skeptical, doubtful, intellectually uncomfortable, the better it is for you.

They scorned neighbors who drank tea and concocted an entirely fictitious sickness narrative around the beverage; they claimed tea stunted growth, turned men into pygmies, and transformed women into…'God knows what.' They claimed tea was stomped into chests by Chinese men with dirty feet, that it was infested with bugs.

The eighteenth century, which distrusted itself in nothing, as a matter of course, hesitated in nothing.

Because he could not afford to fail, he could not afford to trust.

You said electronic lock. I didn't know it was a TL-30X6." "I don't like your tone, Merlin. You sound very pessimistic. Maybe even defeatist." "Heller, listen to me. I brought my StrongArm safe cracker diamond-core drill bits, okay? But drilling through one of these, that's a five-hour job at least. That mother's made from inch-and-a-half-thick steel and cobalt-carbide matrix hardplate, okay?" "If you say so.

I had to assume, of course, that every word Koblenz had told me, including "and" and "the," was a lie. That was a given. But I operated on that assumption most of the time anyway: Washington, D.C., is to lying what Hershey, Pennsylvania, is to chocolate.

He made a derisory snort.

on Dekens' face. "Possibly.

If you had to give a child just one piece of advice upon entering a shopping mall, a good suggestion might be "Remember that everything—and by that I mean everything—is a trick to take your money.

They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly. No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried. Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked. They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone." And what difference does that make?

They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.

Durak," he said, spitting it. When

No matter how well intended our country is, we cannot expect other nations to trust us as much as we trust ourselves.

What, us?" Squirrelflight's eyes opened wide and her tail curled up. "Never!

thought it smelled a bit odd, but when a medicine cat gives it to you—

I don't mean about ignoring StarClan. But it's good for cats to question things instead of just accepting them.

He could not trust her. He could not trust the sun. He could only trust himself and his Clan.

be angry with him," Ravenpaw meowed. "That's good thinking, Crowpaw. Thinking like a warrior, in fact. Where you're going, you must trust nothing and no cat without very good reason.

Just because people are liars is no reason for us to be fools.

I haven't trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I've never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.

I tried to remain skeptical. I reminded myself that I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it.

So I swallowed all of the dark ages nonsense they fed me. Some time passed. I grew up a little, and I gradually began to figure out that pretty much everyone had been lying to me about pretty much everything since the moment I emerged from my mother's womb. This was an alarming revelation. It gave me trust issues later in life.

You really think it's that simple?" I said. "That you can just write a check for two hundred and forty billion dollars and fix all the world's problems?