Quotes About Skepticism

Seeing is not always believing.

They are sceptical towards the claims of grand social theories or narratives, whether Marxist, liberal or Christian. There are no universal truths. They were used in the past to legitimate the power of those who know and deny power to those who do not know, and so should be criticised ('deconstructed').

RenunÅ£area la inteligenÅ£a veritabil? este preÅ£ul care trebuie pl?tit pentru a avea certitudini, ÅŸi este întotdeauna o cheltuial? invizibil? la banca conÅŸtiinÅ£ei noastre, în sensul ?sta, îi prefer pe cei care nu se-nv?luie în mantia raÅ£iunii ÅŸi recunosc caracterul fictiv al credinÅ£ei lor.

The day a person becomes a cynic is the day he loses his youth.

Many people, inside as well as outside the church, no longer believe in the fatherhood of God. Skeptical, hostile feelings toward men have translated into skeptical, hostile feelings toward the God who images himself as Father.

This historical scepticism is healthy. But it misses the bigger point: that whatever the view of Suetonius and other ancient writers, the qualities and characters of the individual emperors did not matter very much to most inhabitants of the empire, or to the essential structure of Roman history and its major developments.

who wryly observed that no one would believe there was a plot against an emperor until he was found dead?

The more power flaunts itself in your face, the more it risks undermining its claims to be taken seriously. Ancient viewers were not all naïve consumers of any message that was thrown at them. Even if some would have looked on these statues in awe and wonderment, it is a fair guess that others would have walked by and laughed, or even spat. In the end, images of power are only as powerful as those who view them allow them to be.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Tell a man there are 300 Billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.

Love has the power of making you believe what you would normally treat with the deepest suspicion.

The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.

We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.

I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

I belong to Bridegrooms Anonymous. Whenever I feel like getting married, they send over a lady in a housecoat and hair curlers to burn my toast for me.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.

See that's where it falls apart for me!" Anne cried. "What sticks in my throat is that God gets the credit but never the blame. I just can't swallow that kind of theological candy. Either God's in charge or he's not...

A cunning liar who relies on the word of another? I suppose I should appreciate the colossal irony.

I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high; Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the Spider to the Fly. "There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin, And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!" Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "for I've often heard it said, They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!

Refusing magic is as costly as embracing it.

It's so awful and sad," she once admitted to Tom Goodenough, "to belong to a race that no sane person believes in.

It is characteristic of the average mind often to question what it hears, but to believe wholeheartedly what it reads.

My mother would mock me. God is merely a weakness for people who need to believe.