skepticism quotes

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

I don’t easily fall for lies, I can see through things.

It is hard for the ape to believe he descended from man.

There’s been some research in cognitive science, I’m told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it’s white noise.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people’s hope.

I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

I purposely don’t talk about money, because people are already skeptical about TV preachers. But I do say that I want you to be blessed. To me, prosperity is having health, having great children, having peace, good relationships. It’s not about the money.

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.

Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

I don’t believe in colleges and universities.

All in all, I just don’t trust journalists – and I don’t think it’s a good practice for me to trust journalists.

There are GMO skeptics more in Europe maybe than in other places, but not exclusively.

A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Seeing is not always believing.

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I’m just a cold-blooded investigator.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

Let no such man be trusted.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

I know that the arts are important. I’m not denying that, but I can’t associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

I don’t believe in icons.

I read the NY Times but I don’t trust all of it.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Young people these days don’t trust anything at all. They want to be free.

I think any statement about stock prices is always suspect unless it’s made by Warren Buffett.

I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.

When I meet people who say – which they do all of the time – ‚I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,‘ and so forth, I switch off quite early.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

Trust, but verify.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

I’m skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

I’m as skeptical as anyone would be about celebrities and causes – and I will dare to say to you that I don’t think of myself as a celebrity per se.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

Of course you can’t ‚trust‘ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‚trust‘ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.