Quotes About Skepticism

We're agnostics, she used to tell her kids, back when they were little and needed a way to define themselves to their Catholic and Jewish and Unitarian friends. We don't know if there's a God, and nobody else does, either. They might say they do, but they really don't.

But the most insidious and dangerous of false religions is secular humanism. It's so crafty, so sneaky, with its kindness and its decency, that only Satan hisself could've come up with it.

How do you know that?" "Maybe I'm a fucking detective

And did I lose my faith in raffles about the same time and for approximately the same reasons that I quit believing that virgins can have babies; or that if I slay only those people the government encourages me to slay, I'll be allowed to spend all of eternity in some vaguely located puffyland sipping milk and honey with a huzzahing throng of cheery nonthinkers?

Cartersian doubt (deliberate suspension of all interpretations of experience that are not absolutely certain)

I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

Mind reedetakse igal sammul. Ma ei usu inimesse, ja sina tahad, et ma usuksin jumalasse.

I only know that I will never again trust my life, my future, to the whims of men, in companies or out. Never again will their judgment have anything to do with what I think I can do.

When he arrived he thought their flaws were normal; their disagreements ordinary. They were pleased by the accomplishments of their neighbors and their mockery of the lazy and the loose was full of laughter. Or used to be. Now, it seemed, the glacial wariness they once confined to strangers more and more was directed toward each other.

By the late 1960s, the idea that "nanny knows best" was already starting to produce a backlash.

between 1983 and 2001, mistrustfulness increased markedly in the US, the UK and Ireland—three

by 1945 few people believed any longer in the magic of the market. This was an intellectual revolution.

They convey neither conviction nor authority.

we lose faith not just in parliamentarians and congressmen, but in Parliament and Congress themselves.

I knew I should believe him, as he taught at Oxford, but his answers did not feel complete. It was like having a meal and not getting quite enough to eat.

Blind belief is dangerous.

Okay, now I know your yanking my chain. Pigs will fly before Blake would ask for our help." Rhoan "Better start ducking those flying piggies then, bro, because I'm totally serious." Riley

one of my favorites: Robby gave her a skeptical look. "Ye're an angel of death. No offense, but I would call that a wee bit of harm." "We're called Deliverers, actually. And we're not supposed to take someone before their time." "How does that work?" Gregori lifted his camera, focusing on her. "I mean do you just go down a line, saying, 'Eenie meenie mynie moe, sorry, dude you gotta go'?

Never trust a man who bites the heads off chickens is probably a good sound rule of practice.

I believe in absolutely nothing except yeast and the inevitability of politicians.

But if you start talking to ghosts and so on in front of other people, they think you're a liar or just showing off. That's if you're lucky. If you aren't, which is most of the time, they think you're totally crazy.

Nu te increde in nimeni . Nici in propriile-ti sentimente .

there's a certain wisdom in being skeptical. But we need to hold our skepticism lightly, with a willingness to explore before dismissing outright