Quotes About Skepticism

It was seldom that I attended any religious meetings, as my parents had not much faith in and were never so unfortunate as to unite themselves with any of the religious sects.

When people say perhaps its cause theyre lying. Either they dont believe the thing theyre saying, or they do believe it only they dont want to admit they do.

You are exactly what you seem, and so you always assume that other people are, too.

Personally, I don't like a girlfriend to have a husband. If she'll fool her husband, I figure she'll fool me.

Balaam's ass is the patron saint of apologists. Madness, as we shall see, is an appropriate term for the unreality of unbelief.

Yale philosopher Harry Frankfurt writes, "One of the salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.

In a world congenial to skepticism, skeptics love to play the skeptic's card nonchalantly as if it were the royal flush that trumped all other cards and could not be countered. For many, it has become the skeptics' way of hanging out a "Do Not Disturb" sign. Simply raise a skeptical objection and retire from all argument. But of course, the simplest response is to turn such skepticism back on itself.

Don't trust anyone over thirty," the 1960s radicals cried. "Don't trust anyone under three hundred," came Thomas Oden's wise reply.

As Pascal wrote long ago, "Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.

I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.

I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world.

I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world. My only ally is the tagged dissolute. The tagged dissolute. That is the only cross on which I wish to be crucified. Though ten thousand people criticize me, I can throw in their teeth my challenge: Are you not all the more dangerous for being without tags?

Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves?

What the tanuki doesn't realize is that people who affect to believe all our nonsense often harbor evil and insidious plots in their hearts

you didn't know enough to distrust others

You may wish to give the name 'honesty' to what others would call dimwittedness, but leave it to such 'honest men' as yourselves to deceive the world with your fabulous dreams and superstitions.

All men love peace in their armchairs after dinner but they disbelieve the other nations's professions, rightly measuring its sincerity by their own.

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

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Whoever cannot believe and yet longs for it, whoever knows how miserable the Enlightenment is and yet cannot get rid of it, also knows what hell is. To be banished knowingly into unbelief.

Never believe in anything until it has been officially denied.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.