Quotes About Skepticism

We know there aren't little green men running around this planet touching peepees.

Remember your ABC?" he'd ask, so often it got irritating. "Accept nothing. Believe nothing. Check everything," Christina would answer.

when you're starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.

She and Felicity didn't tolerate the overly skinny, the overly sporty, the overly rich or the overly intellectual. They laughed at people with personal trainers and small dogs, people who put overly intellectual or misspelled comments on Facebook, people who used the phrase "I'm in a very good place right now" and people who always got "involved"—people like Cecilia Fitzpatrick. Tess and Felicity sat on the sidelines of life smirking at the players.

Well, anyway, she certainly was not worried that John-Paul was having an affair. Definitely not. It wasn't a possibility. Not even a remote possibility. He wouldn't have time for an affair! When would he fit it in? He did travel a bit. He could fit in an affair then.

He wasn't falling for the lie, she could tell. He didn't need to believe it as badly as her parents did.

What a load of crap, thought Frances, while simultaneously thinking, Please let it be true.

Accept nothing. Believe nothing. Check everything,

The real difficulty with thousands in the present day is not that Christianity has been found wanting, but that it has never been seriously tried.

It is unfair to believe everything we hear about lawyers. Some of it might not be true.

I'm beginning to be skeptical of my own skepticism.

It truly sucks to doubt your friends when you only have one or two of them, I realized.

And you know, I believed him. What girl wouldn't?

Everyone was nice when they wanted something from you —was it a divinity thing, or just a basic natural fact?

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of telling the truth.

Ik zou het nog niet half zo lang hebben volgehouden,' zei ik, maar toen besefte ik dat hij in veel opzichten op de Dobu leek: zijn paranoïde trekjes, zijn zwarte humor, zijn wantrouwen jegens plezier, zijn geheimzinnigdoenerij. Ik ging als vanzelf aan zijn resultaten twijfelen. Als er maar één kenner van een bepaald volk is, zegt diens analyse dan meer over dat volk of over hem? Zoals gewoonlijk was ik meer geïnteresseerd in het raakvlak tussen die twee dan in andere dingen.

I believe you. I'm just terrified by what overenthusiasm might look like. If what I am seeing now is underenthusiasm.' 'If you're anything like Fen, you won't like it much.' I guessed I wasn't anything like Fen.

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time.

Marriage is unnatural; only the human being would commit to something that it doesn't trust.

Beware of what "everybody says".

Please tell me you're not listening to that Shriver woman. She's a hysteric. And so annoyingly smug, as if she wants civilization to collapse, just so she can be proved right. I can't bear the sound of her voice.

Se vio desconfiando instintivamente de las personas con las que contactaba y que más se deshacían en ayes y se ofrecían a ayudar «en todo lo que pudieran» sin especificar nunca en qué ni cuándo. La experiencia le decía que los que mejor expresaban sus sentimientos eran los menos aptos para hacerlo con algo que no fueran palabras.