Quotes About Skepticism

Shit is another useful word. Also very common. For example, pleasantly surprised? You say 'No shit?' You think someone tells you tales, you scoff 'You're shitting me.' You find something you like very much, you exclaim 'That's good shit!

If we chose to refuse irony, we risk becoming irony's dupe.

What gives journalism its authenticity and vitality is the tension between the subject's blind self absorption and the journalist's skepticism. Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.

If you believe everything you read, you better not read.

Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.

I'm on a government watch list. But I'm not interested, because government watches only work twenty minutes out of every hour.

She says he says, but she could be lying to me, and he could be lying to her, so I can't believe her, even if I could believe her.

It's scary to be a woman on a blind date. For all she knows the man she is meeting up with could be a rapist, a murderer, or, God forbid, a politician.

I don't assume anything about people, and I sure don't trust 'em. Just when you think you know a guy, he turns out to be a liar, a fraud, or a backstabber.

This doesn't prove anything. It's just a bunch of letters that anyone could have written on paper. She'll accuse me of buying a Hungarian dictionary

Of course, if you ask, nobody was there when they torched the churches.

Estás de broma o qué? —pregunta a su vez, mirando a Melchor con su cara inconfundible de pedrada—. Pero ¿cómo quieres que crea en un sistema político que le da el derecho de voto a un individuo como yo?

it's ridiculous, isn't it, that after all these centuries of practice, after so many incredible advances and inventions, we still have no way of knowing when someone is lying; naturally, this both benefits and prejudices all of us equally, and may be our one remaining redoubt of freedom.

Uma pessoa nunca sabe se o que lhe dizem é verdade, nunca há a certeza de nada que não venha de nós mesmos.

Sim, é ridículo que depois de tantos séculos de prática, e de incríveis avanços e inventos, não haja ainda uma maneira de saber quando alguém mente; é claro que isso nos beneficia e prejudica a todos por igual, talvez seja o único reduto de liberdade que nos resta.

All generalizations are inaccurate, including this one.

Religious people should always be wary of the ways in which political power is wielded and skeptical of how economic privileges are distributed. They should also be mindful of how their own traditions have been used for narrow political purposes, and how some religious figures have manipulated the faith to aggrandize their own power. The doctrine of original sin and the idea of a fallen side of human nature apply to people who are religious no less than those who are not.

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

That day, I began to be incredulous. Or, rather, I regretted having been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a passion of the mind. Such is credulity.

Why, I never did believe it

How much he could believe of it, he did not know; for he did not know the man, and he had learned to suspect that every civilized man was a liar and a cheat until he had proved himself otherwise.

The wise are doubtful,' Socrates returned, 'and I should not be singular if I too doubted.

Euripides questioned everything. He was a misanthrope who preferred books to men.

What is there, Owain wondered aloud, to the sky above him and the soil below, persuades this man still that my words do not mean what they seem to mean in sane men's ears?