Quotes About Skepticism

Oh, you can trust the studies well enough, generally speaking. What you can't trust are the sweeping conclusions that people often attach to them.

This bewildered but well-meaning gentleman opposed his daughter's marriage to Captain Nungesser on the grounds--not unreasonable on the face of it--that Nungesser was destitute, broken-bodied, something of a bounder, unemployable except in time of war, and French.

As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking.

We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry.

Mr. President," he says, almost like a southern drawl, thick with incredulity. This man could look you in the eye and tell you that the world is flat, the sun rises in the west, and the moon is made of blue cheese, and he'd probably pass a polygraph test while doing so.

It is not a surprise that a person would want to be a prophet. What's ridiculous is that other people let him.

New Rule: Instead of using their $10 billion atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider to re-create the Big Bang by melting atom parts in temperatures a million times hotter than the sun, scientists should not do that. I'm just sayin' it sounds dangerous. I'm as interested as the next guy in determining the origin of matter, but first couldn't we solve some simple mystery, like why some-detector batteries always die at four a.m.?

New Rule: You can't put a windmill in your campaign ad if you voted against every single bill that might lead to someone building one. As long as you're sending a camera crew to a farm, why not just take a picture of actual bullshit?

Doubt is the only appropriate response for human beings.

Always be suspicious or of course: of course is not a reason.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humoured these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

Nothing strengthens the case for scepticism more than the fact that there are people who are not sceptics. If they all were, they would be wrong.

Denying, believing and doubting are to men what running is to horses.

What then is man to do in this state of affairs? Is he to doubt everything, to doubt if he is awake, whether he is being pinched or burned? Is he to doubt whether he is doubting, to doubt whether he exists? No one can go that far, and I maintain that a perfectly genuine sceptic has never existed.

I believe those witnesses who get their throats cut.

Je ne crois que les histoires dont les témoins se feraient égorger.

look, you know i don't wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn't make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious/...

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.

I didn't feel the need to examine every stranger that approached.

He's lying." No one seemed surprised at Scout's announcement about Foreman. "He's a spook," Nada said. "They lie every time they open their mouths, even if it's just to breathe.

Remember, there are neither honest people nor friends anymore. Still less anyone knowledgeable

Stalin } took care always to say the opposite of what he did, and do the opposite of what he said.

Un hombre con un chándal blanco abrió la cabina y se guardó la propina que, aunque se supone que se dan para beber, le serviría para comer, porque tenía cara de mentiroso

We don't want to believe that the entire government can be jackknifed by a high school dropout.