Quotes About Skepticism

The more uncivilised the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. The truly civilised man is always skeptical and tolerant. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.

It is hard to believe a man when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

Of three things be wary- of a feather on a cat, The shepherd eating mutton, And a guardsman that is fat.

Three things never trust in- The maiden sworn as pure, The vows a king has given, And an ambush that is sure.

There are more nasty things in pretty packages in the world than most people would believe.

She'd have laughed at the expression on his face, if she hadn't known that would make him turn against her. What a joke! To think that she, a skeptic above all else, had raised up a pious little Satanist! Could Satanists be pious?

He studied a roll, weighing it in his hand. It seemed awfully heavy. As good as the food had been so far, it didn't seem likely that it was underbaked, but he was not in the mood to choke down raw dough. He nibbled it dubiously, then bit into it with a great deal more enthusiasm when it proved to have sausage baked into the middle of it.

It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others.

We are encouraged to see honest people as naive, as potential losers.

In today's world we are taught to fear the truth, to believe it always hurts. We are encouraged to see honest people as naive, as potential losers.

Youth culture today is cynical about love. And that cynicism has come from their pervasive feeling that love cannot be found.

Many skeptics, it is true, are inclined to dismiss the whole procedure [chart reading] as akin to astrology or necromancy; but the sheer weight of its importance in Wall Street requires that its pretensions be examined with some degree of care.

What have we learned? The market scoffs at Graham's principles in the short run, but they are always revalidated in the end. If you buy a stock purely because its price has been going up—instead of asking whether the underlying company's value is increasing—then sooner or later you will be extremely sorry. That's not a likelihood. It is a certainty.

an arena where, so Merewalh's priest told me, Christians had been fed to wild beasts. Some things are just too good to be true and so I was not sure I believed him.

You take me for a fool, Douglas?" "I take you as you show yourself, John Randolph

Participaba en aquellas discusiones con toda su erudición y al mismo tiempo con la distancia de alguien que ya no cree en la erudición como instrumento para resolver problemas

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal...

The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.