Quotes About Skepticism

Question authority... Then ignore it!

Do not take to heart everything you hear.

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Just because 2 billion people believe it, doesn't mean it's true.

Men are often mislead by their fellow-men.

The next time you think something's too good to be true, remember - so's electricity and sewerage!

No one of real intelligence will accept anything just because some authority declares it be so. Don't accept the truth of anything you have not confirmed for yourself.

Don't accept any knowledge or conventional wisdom without critically questioning it first.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.

The public regards lawyers with great distrust. They think lawyers are smarter than the average guy but use their intelligence deviously. Well, they're wrong. Usually they are not smarter.

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity.

There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

TV news is as bloody as Shakespeare but without the intelligence and the poetry. If you watch television news you know less about the world than if you drank gin out of a bottle

The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism.

Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream.

Do you know, André, I sometimes think that you have no heart.' 'Presumably because I sometimes betray intelligence.

People always have such a hard time believing that robots could do bad things.

As a result of half a century of Soviet rule people have been weaned from a belief in human kindness.

Always carry with you a little reasonable doubt, should you meet someone who needs to be found innocent.

Instead of showing strangers kindness and giving them the benefit of the doubt, we increasingly show them only fear, and that is bad for us and them.

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.

I was convinced that our beliefs are based much more on custom and example than on any certain knowledge.

For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice.

Knowledge never springs from faith. It springs from doubt.