Quotes About Skepticism

Somebody should have warned the Trojans. Beware of gifts bearing Greeks.

If you love your government, you are not paying attention.

I am the most skeptical of men in one of the most skeptical of professions in a world which regrettably holds out fewer and fewer dreams the older I get. But on the water, fly rod in hand, my dreams never desert me...I am never without hope.

There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves.

Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

No conclusion can be more agreable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limites of human reason and capacity

Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin.

It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave.

On belief in miracles) - "The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder.

Should a traveler, returning from a far country, bring us an account of men wholly different from any with whom we were ever acquainted, men who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, or revenge, who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit, we should immediately, from these circumstances, detect the falsehood and prove him a liar with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies.

Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.

I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense, who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

The worst speculative Sceptic ever I knew, was a much better Man than the best superstitious Devotee & Bigot." "I must inform you, too, that this was the way of thinking of the Antients on this Subject. If a Man made Proffession of Philosophy, whatever his Sect was, they alaways expected to find more Regulaity in his Life and Manners, than in those of ignorant & illiterate.

?e smo prepri?ani, da ogenj greje ali da voda osvežuje, je to zgolj zato, ker bi nas misliti druga?e stalo preve? bole?ine.

Nada cierto podemos afirmar del mundo objetivo y del sujeto que lo mira, salvo que uno y otro son haces de percepciones instantáneas e inconexas ligadas por la memoria y la imaginación.

Bleib' nüchtern und vergiss' nicht, skeptisch zu sein!

I have long entertained a suspicion, with regard to the decisions of philosophers upon all subjects, and found in myself a greater inclination to dispute, than assent to their conclusions.

Where men are heated by zeal and enthusiasm, there is no degree of human testimony so strong as may not be procured for the greatest absurdity. - Of Miracles

PAMPHILUS TO HERMIPPUS It has

But should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion; men, in all ages, have been so much imposed on by ridiculous stories of that kind, that this very circumstance would be a full proof of a cheat, and sufficient, with all men of sense, not only to make them reject the fact, but even reject it without farther examination.