Quotes About Skepticism

She stared, perhaps suspecting irony, as she always did beneath the unintelligible.

He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.

I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing, that they have really received one.

It is idle to hope for the enforcement of a law where nineteen-twentieths of the people do not believe in the justice of its provisions.

What is the world coming to, when you can't trust a whore named Snake?

The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it.

observe everything . . . ?trust nobody . . . ?despise your mother . . . ?effort is vulgar . . . ?things were better in the eighteenth century.

And then the old exhortations would come out: observe everything…trust nobody…despise your mother…effort is vulgar…things were better in the eighteenth century.

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

I love Humanity but I hate humans

Those people have seen something. What it is I do not know and I can not care to know. (on flying saucers)

Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.

Not one of these people—not even the policeman himself—had any evidence that the collie was mad. There are not two really rabid dogs seen at large in New York or in any other city in the course of a year. Yet, at the back of the human throat ever lurks that fool cry of "Mad dog!"—ever ready to leap forth into shouted words at the faintest provocation

Der unnatürliche Zustand, daß der Mensch nicht an eine von ihm selber erkannte Wahrheit glaubt, dauert an und wirkt sich aus. Die Stadt der Wahrheit kann nicht auf dem Sumpfboden des Skeptizismus erbaut werden.

It may seem strange, but the idea that Maurizio might also hold his own weapons, or even the same ones, did not occur to me. And yet I should have suspected that Nella and the Party could also be turned against me. But that is how we men are made: we see everything from our own point of view and have great difficulty imagining another perspective.

Nobody believes anything that's put in a poem.

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen.

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been devided as fools and madmen.

One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.

George W. Bush spoke to the camera, his face so decisively earnest that it was clear he was lying, his button eyes lit up with amateurish subterfuge. Only truly great men can be adept at shameless lying, Joshua thought. This dude was straining to the point of snapping.

They were among the leaders of what I had begun to think of as "Team Apocalypse," the media outlets that – for reasons I could not fully understand – seemed committed to painting as bleak a picture of the coronavirus as possible.

The morale of the Metropolitan Police Force had reached its lowest point during the Ripper murders of the previous year and had not yet recovered. The files of the Whitechapel murders had not been closed as the case was still ongoing, but nobody in London trusted the police to do their job.

We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy.

Sebbene, come tutti a quei tempi, non credessero in Dio, erano però, come tutti, superstiziosi. Della fede si può dubitare quanto si vuole, ma della superstizione si è convinti.