Quotes About Skepticism

They do not have big ideas or a grandiose vision of what America should be like. They pretty much just love to hate.

But you were there, correct? Perhaps whoever was on the other side of your online communications –and we really don't know who that was at this point –but perhaps that person had seen your news' –Flair said it as though the word 'news' itself tasted bad in his mouth –'program and decided to play along so he could meet a luscious thirty-six-year-old TV star. Isn't that possible?

You're kidding, right?" Broome couldn't have looked more incredulous without plastic surgery. "Let me get this straight: Ray Levine told you that he showed up after you saw Stewart Green lying there.

That's what happens, friends. It gets so damned depressing, coming up against the cultural hari-kiri we keep committing, that cynicism becomes the only supportable attitude. And then the kids prove they've got it. Even I, anxious to give them every possible point, begin to suspect the rot goes from top to bottom, young and old alike. And then the kids do me in. They come up with solid gold, and make me feel like the idiot I certainly am, on occasion.

Why doesn't their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? I thought I was a Christian but I'm not. I'm something else and I don't know what.

It's grown people who always believe the worst

You're starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear. Hold out your hand." I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral contracts.

Cynical, hell. I'm a healthy old man with a constitutional mistrust of paternalism and government in large doses.

I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person's attitude so that they wouldn't get any closer. I didn't easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music

Can'ttrustpeople. Won'tdoanygood. They'llkillyoueverytime. They'llkilleachother. They'llkilleveryone.

I happen to like the strange ones. People who look normal and leads normal lives – they're the ones you have to watch out for.

I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. so when I do get turned on, I don't trust it, I have to investigate the source.

Never trust a man who carries a handkerchief, I always say. One of many prejudicial rules of thumb.

Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)

Wasn't he the one who said you shouldn't trust anybody who calls himself an ordinar man? - Naoko

Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands (Salon, 20 February 2009).

Now I'm not trying to make excuses, but I don't get turned on by that many women. If anything, I think of myself as more the non-turn-on type. So when I do get turned on, I don't trust it; I have to investigate the source.

People without good education are also more prone to believe in conspiracy theories.

It is often said that there are no atheists in foxholes. It seems to me that shelled bunkers would be full of skeptics. In the middle of a war it must be harder, not easier, to believe in a good God.

Jules always told me not to tell people your business, not to tell them your past. He said to keep them guessing. He said that once a person knew all there was to know about you, they'd take advantage of you. Trust nobody, he'd told me over and over. In a way, I'd kept his advice up until just then. I was stoned and felt like sharing all my shit with the whole world. I wanted to be taken advantage of.

There was a painting of Jesus rolling his eyes up at the sky in every room.

I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones - by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether universe or a smaller one.

Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course.