Quotes About Skepticism

The greatest heresy is not to believe in witchcraft" (haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

MOST LIES succeed because no one goes through the work to figure out how to catch them.

Suspicious people should be terrible lie catchers, prone to disbelieving-the-truth

i find nothing more depressing than optimism.

At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.

We live in an age that cannibalises its past because it has lost faith in its future.

Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development.

I brought you eyewitness reports about Jesus' healings and the phenomenon of raising the dead, and you only opened your bag of logical tricks and came up with some threadbare explanation which was far more fantastic than the event it was supposed to explain.

A wise man states as true nothing he cannot prove

Politicians... talk in generalities and lies, and I think they've caused all our grief. They're so awful, they're really funny. I hate thinking this because my dad loved politics.

We believe that the health of a culture is measured in part by the vigor with which its immune system responds to nonsense.

History may always become a kind of evasion of the search for truth. It is always possible to hide behind history so as to affirm nothing on one's own account...Ultimately, the skeptical historian no longer searches for anything, and the dogmatic philosopher has nothing but enemies or students but never friends.

I learned from my parents the ability to question, never to trust implicitly those in charge, not to believe the promises made in speeches and never to ignore the atrocious propaganda posters in public places … this kind of propaganda is designed to cause fear, and people who live in fear of a common enemy can be easily manipulated.

Louis had learned to be suspicious of the word educational . It covered, after all, a multitude of sins.

He eyed Riven. "This gnoll is legitimate?" "I verified that independently," Riven said.

Private, visual reading and private composition thus encouraged individual critical thinking and contributed ultimately to the development of skepticism and intellectual heresy.

Romesh Chand was a man who did not believe in telephones, in the necessity for telephones

I was also skeptical about what all the grunge bands would do on their second albums. There were a lot of great first albums, but what would they do once they were platinum acts instead of kids living in roach-infested garages? I mean, if they were so miserable, once they had money, they could all go see shrinks.

Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it.

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

Skilled verse is the work of a profound skeptic.

That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.

Ce qui m'intéressait était l'érudition : elle est un « jeu de vérité » amusant, qui découvre, déchiffre, explique ou explicite l'inconnu ou le méconnu ; elle est donc prête à croire que toute « vérité » reçue a des chances d'être fausse, au risque de déplaire, de mettre l'opinion au défi.