quotations about skepticism
Through a vicious circle of pure reason skepsis itself becomes dogma.
JOHANN GEORG HAMANN
Briefwechsel
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.
CARL SAGAN
"The Burden of Skepticism"
If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.
ANN DRUYAN
Editor's Introduction, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
Absolute relativism, which is neither more nor less than skepticism, in the most modern sense of the term, is the supreme triumph of the reasoning reason.
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
The Tragic Sense of Life
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
ISAAC ASIMOV
The Roving Mind
The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."
H. L. MENCKEN
Minority Report
He walks with angels in his picket
They tell him what to do
His shopping cart's filled with newspapers
And thirty-six discarded shoes
He's met with heavy skepticism
Messiahs don't come everyday
Shopping cart Jesus
He wants to talk to you
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"Shopping Cart Jesus"
Liquid promises drain
With your lies
Blaming others before
Yourself
Forgotten disposable fool
Caught in a fictional
Daydream
Skeptic, unbeliever
Taking everything for granted
Shallow
INTO ETERNITY
"Shallow"
The skeptics never make it through the static.
LESS THAN JAKE
"Jump"
Apathy increasing where skepticism once prevailed
Ignorance covering the youth like a bride's white veil
DANCE HALL CRASHERS
"Blind Leading the Blind"
Suffer not your faith to be shaken by the sophistries of skeptics.
S. CLARKE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Rabid suspicion has nothing in it of skepticism. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
ERIC HOFFER
The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms
Skeptics are generally ready to believe anything, provided is it only sufficiently improbable; it is at matters of fact that such people stumble.
KARL LUDWIG VON KNEBEL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Skepticism is the first step towards truth.
DENIS DIDEROT
Pensées philosophiques
Along the master plan
Heading to the barricade
Diversity or skepticism falls into my brain
I rubbed it with the bow
And I listened to the string
Then the whisper of the end
Slipped into the dialogue
HIATUS
"Ghost in the Rain"
Skeptics, like dolphins, change when dying.
LADY BLESSINGTON
"Desultory Thoughts and Reflections by the Countess of Blessington", The Literary World
Skeptics are apt to be superstitious; the moral restlessness of perpetual doubt often superinduces nervous timidity.
GEORGE BANCROFT
History of the United States of America
Skepticism, not cleanliness, is next to godliness. Skepticism is the father of freedom. It is like the pry that holds open the door for truth to slip in.
GERRY SPENCE
Seven Simple Steps to Personal Freedom: An Owner's Manual for Life
All forms of modern skepticism have a common philosophical foundation. Their philosophy denies that we can know any thing except that which we learn through the senses directly, or through conclusions deduced from the senses. We know that there is a sun because we see it; we know approximately its weight and its distance from the earth, because by long processes of reasoning we reach conclusions on those subjects from phenomena which we do see. What we do not thus see, or hear, or touch, or taste, or smell, or thus conclude from what we have seen, or heard, or touched, or tasted, or smelled, is said to belong to the unknown and unknowable. This is the basis of modern skepticism. It is the basis, too, of much of modern theology. It is the secret of the " scientific method." By this method we conclude the existence of an invisible God from the phenomena of life exactly as we conclude the existence of an invisible ether from the phenomena of light. But the God thus deduced is like the ether, only an hypothesis. It is quite legitimate to offer a new hypothesis; and the scientist will be as ready to accept one hypothesis as another, provided it accounts for the phenomena. This philosophy, pursued to its legitimate and logical conclusion, issues in the denial that man is a religious being; or possesses a spiritual nature; or is any thing more than a highly organized and developed animal.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
Skepticism is the beginning of failure.
LAZYBOY
"This Is the Truth"