Quotes About Skepticism

I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself

And then there were terrible things, like Alex's assertion that the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children was "completely fake … they clearly used actors." Inspired by claims like this, Sandy Hook "truthers" had begun bombarding the parents of the murdered children with messages like: "You're a fraud and an asshole. Rot in hell you fucking prick." (That one had been sent to Lenny Pozner, whose 6-year-old son, Noah, died in the shooting.)

we tend to love nothing more than to declare other people insane.

The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.

Whenever you hear a politician start a sentence with, "If we can put a man on the moon . . . ," grab your wallet.

These days, every politician is a laughing-stock, and the laughter which occasionally used to illuminate the dark corners of the political world with dazzling, unexpected shafts of hilarity has become an unthinking reflex on our part, a tired Pavlovian reaction to situations that are too difficult or too depressing to think about clearly.

You shouldn't take notice of anything that Henry tells you, you know,' he now says, with a chilly smile. 'After all, he is a politician.

I've learned not to trust what I see on television.

Paranoid art, unlike paranoid persons, also distrusts itself. And so, paranoid art is the ultimate opposite, the urgent opposite, of complacent art.

Wheels within wheels was another of Minna's phrases, used exclusively to sneer at our notions of coincidence or conspiracy. If we boys ever dabbled in astonishment at, say, his running into three girls he knew from high school in a row on Court Street, two of whom he'd dated behind each other's backs, he'd bug his eyes and intone, wheels within wheels. No met had ever pitched a no-hitter, but Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan both pitched them after being traded away---wheels within wheels.

That's stupid. That's people.

Point is, people lie a lot. Sometimes out of habit. Not many people are good at telling the truth.

and when is enough proof enough?

If god exists, he is not to be believed in.

There's nothing that could convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced. But there is an abundance of clues that would give the wanting believer something to hold on to.

Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect that she was not falling in love at all, bt doing something much more ordinary.

Such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.

Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.

El problema no es que mientas. El problema es que te creo

WÄ…tpliwe, aby Å›wiat miaÅ' sens; jeszcze bardziej wÄ…tpliwe, aby miaÅ' sens podwójny lub potrójny, zauwa?y niedowiarek. Ja sÄ…dzÄ™, ?e tak wÅ'aÅ›nie jest; (...).

No hay hombre que, fuera de su especialidad, no sea crédulo;

Berkeley affirmed the existence of personal identity, "I my self am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active principle that perceives . . ." (Dialogues, 3); Hume, the skeptic, refutes this identity and makes of every man "a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity" (op. cit., I, 4, 6).

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what you will—than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle and golf course.