Quotes About Skepticism

You're a cynic, Urgit accused. Silk shook his head. No, Your Majesty. I'm a realist.

Torak's dead. Really? Aunt Pol said. Have you seen his grave? Have you opened the grave and seen his bones?

Awareness of the breadth and seriousness of agency issues constitutes the first line of defense for fund managers. By evaluating each participant involved in investment activities with a skeptical attitude, fiduciaries increase the likelihood of avoiding or mitigating the most serious principal-agent conflicts.

Yes, I'm paranoid — but am I paranoid enough?

YES, I'M PARANOID—BUT AM I PARANOID ENOUGH?

It's like there's some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't happy.

In this instance, he was wise enough to be suspicious of his own desire to seem wise, and to refuse to indulge in it….my father understood that advice - even wise advice - actually does nothing for the advisee, changes nothing inside, and can actually cause confusion when the advisee is made to feel the wide gap between the comparative simplicity of the advice and the totally muddled complications of his own situation and path.

Irony tyrannizes us. All US irony is based on an implicit 'I don't really mean what I'm saying.

It's painful to believe that the would-be 'public servants' you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot.

I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away. But then how do you know they're monsters, then? That's the monstrosity right there, I'm starting to think. That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.

Irony and hip ennui are extremely authoritarian.

I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away....That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.

By all means don't THINK about the validity of what they're claiming your life hinges on. Oh do not ask what IS it. Do not ask not whether it's not insane. Simply open wide for the spoon.

nobody does anything for nothing. ... it is the ordinary lot of people to have no friends if they themselves care for nobody.

Plurality should not be assumed without necessity

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Don't trust the person who has broken faith once.

Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.

He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law.

He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.