Quotes About Skepticism

Being an atheist makes someone a clearer thinking, fairer person. They [atheists] are not doing things to be rewarded in heaven; they're doing things because they're right, because they live by a moral code.

I do not believe in organized religion, herbal remedies, yoga, Reiki, kabbalah, deep massage, slow food, or chicken soup for the soul. The nostrums of Deepak Chopra and Barbara De Angelis cannot rescue people like me. I believe in crazyass passion.

The difference between a hermeneutics of restoration and a hermeneutics of suspicion, we might say, lies in the difference between unveiling and unmasking. Here

Literary theory, especially, cast its lot with a spirit of ceaseless skepticism and incessant interrogation; modeling itself on Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust, it was "der Geist, der stets verneint"—the spirit that always negates.

Something was going on here, something that wasn't right. It was almost like the killer was lobbing grenades at her with clues pointing to different suspects. Was that part of his game?

As late as 1711, Addison says cautiously: 'I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.

Truth is overrated.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

I'll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody.

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

belief is the death of intelligence.

I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.

Anyone in the United States today who isn't paranoid must be crazy.

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.

None of us offered to shake hands. There was no advantage to letting somebody get hold of you.

Moreover, people who believe the game is rigged are easy prey for political demagogues with fast tongues and dumb ideas.

Angry voters are more willing to support candidates who vilify their opponents and find easy scapegoats. Talking heads have become shouting heads. Many Americans have grown cynical about our collective ability to solve our problems. And that cynicism has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as nothing gets solved.

there is no one, but no one, more gullible than a psychiatrist)

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

Skepticism is a religion very rich in evangelists but very short on saviors.

In your passion for the true, people may see nothing but faddism.

Every man for himself, the devil for all.

If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled.

We must work hard at overcoming the natural tendency to see causal connections and other patterns where there are none by examining all the evidence, not just the data that support our gut feeling. Critical thinking, skepticism, and science did not evolve on the savannah millions of years ago. They are unnatural and go against the grain of those instincts that helped our species survive for hundreds of thousands of years.