Quotes About Skepticism

Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.

If a theory purports to explain everything, then it is likely not explaining much at all.

T]he downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large.

as astronomer Carl Sagan once aptly put it, you do not want to keep your mind so open that your brain is likely to fall out.

we must require an agreement to the principle that there are no sacred cows. Anything and everything must be the subject of free inquiry and skeptical investigation. To allow otherwise, for practical or any other kind of reasons, is an intellectual travesty.

British astronomer royal Richard Woolley, who in 1956 said, "All this talk about space travel is utter bilge, really."10 Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit the earth just five years later.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.-Adam Smith

Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers Ã¢â'¬Â¦ even if you write it yourself.

Welcome to Suckersville, man.

That is how science works, not through blind faith, but continual doubt.

People believed in witches because it made things easier. People don't just need an enemy, they need an explanation. And it's often useful, in unsettled times, where ignorance is

Father Christmas?' said Father Vodol, suspiciously. 'It doesn't sound very memorable.

Though politicians are regarded as scum, government as a machine is held to be almost infallible.

America is no longer a country that cares about experts. In fact, it hates experts. If you can't fit a story into the culture-war storyline in ten seconds or less, it dies.

Russiagate happened in an opposite context. If the story fell apart it would benefit Donald Trump politically, a fact that made a number of reporters queasy about coming forward. #Russiagate became synonymous with #Resistance, which made public skepticism a complicated proposition.

Miracles do not happen.

The way we saw things, it didn't matter that God had created the heavens and the earth—he did not want us excited about living here. A good fundamentalist worth his weight in guilt was quick to remind any skeptic that the world was going to hell in a handbasket.

And when they are told, 'Believe as other people have believed,' they say, 'Are we to believe just as fools believe?' Surely they are the fools, even though they do not realize it. 14 When they meet those who believe, they say, 'We believe.' But when they are alone with their evil leaders, they say, 'We are really with you; we were only mocking.' 15

Variations in Ianguage, which at first appear to support the skeptic, are ultimately the proof of its meaning, since words would not change in meaning unless they were trying to say something.

Very few philosophers have been anarchists. Nearly all of them admit that a State and a power are necessary. They do not wash their hands of it, and yet they do not consent to the myth. Or, when they do, they nonetheless give warning that it is a myth. This is the source of their uneasiness. It is not an anomaly or an aristocratic malady.

To get a child's trust - you may know or not - is a very hard thing to do. They're so used to not believing adults - because adults tell tales and lies all the time.

She had been in situations like this, where people said, Convince me, and in none of those had they actually wanted to be convinced. She could lay down a perfect argument and they just invented new bullshit on the spot to justify why the answer was still no. When people said, Convince me, she knew it didn't mean they had an open mind. It meant they had power and wanted to enjoy it a minute.

when we honestly bring our skepticism to God and diligently seek truth, He will not condemn us, but will help us find it.

Well-informed cynicism is only another mode of conformity.