Quotes About Skepticism

You know," Ghastly said to Skulduggery, "for someone who hates plans, you've got an awful lot of them." "Well, yes," Skulduggery replied, "but really, the likelihood of any of them actually working is extraordinarily slim.

Skulduggery took a small spool of thread from his pocket and started wrapping it around the door handles. "That'll hold?" Valkyrie asked sceptically. "This is Resolute Thread. The more pressure applied, the stronger it gets. It's very rare. They say it was made from the stomach lining of an emperor dragon, over 2000 years ago." "Was it?" "No, it's just really strong thread.

Valkyrie frowned. "You think this is a trap?" "I don't know," he said, "but I try not to underestimate my opponents, no matter how ridiculous their beards.

Once you reject evidence as a source of knowledge, you don't gotta believe nothin' you don't like.

Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.

Knowledge of divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

Knowledge we have. Anyone who strives for it with particular intensity is suspect of striving against it.

Those who know nothing must believe everything.

Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.

Knowledge of divine things for the most part, as Heraclitus says, is lost to us by incredulity.

Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a difference between having an open mind and having holes in one's head?

... I distrust manifest knowledge.

Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking: a way of skeptically interrogating the universe.

If a Manx cat tells you that it is trying to preserve its long, beautiful tail, you don't have to believe it - especially if you have eyes.

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]

The greater the crime perpetrated by the leadership, the less likely it is that the people will ever believe their leaders to be capable of perpetrating such an event.

You shouldn't blindly accept a leader's advice. You've got to question leaders on occasion.

On government & unions: the only thing worse than blind trust is blind mistrust.

Don't just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

Certainty ends inquiry.

I didn't even dream it would be so good. But I would never let my children come close to the thing.

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.