Skepticism Quotes - Page 11

• Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Philosophy, Taken, Atheism

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• Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics, who were the least surly of philosophers.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Sound, Philosopher, Affair

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• Spirituality authors, who are generally forgiving of most human foibles ... take a hard line on intellectualism.... Skepticism they view with contempt, as the refuge of the unenlightened.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Views, Forgiving, Atheism

  Wendy Kaminer (2000). “Sleeping with Extra-terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety”, Vintage

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• Fifteen years of skepticism has done more for me than 20 years of force-fed religion and 30 years of indifference in between.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Years, Atheism, Done

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• You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

  George Santayana

  Philosophy, Heart, Reality

  Durant Drake, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, James Bissett Pratt, Arthur Kenyon Rogers, George Santayana (1920). “Essays in critical realism: a co-operative study of the problem of knowledge”

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• Whoever will imagine a perpetual confession of ignorance, a judgment without leaning or inclination, on any occasion whatever, hasa conception of Pyrrhonism.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Ignorance, Judgment, Imagine

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.374, Stanford University Press

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• I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Women, Believe, Heart

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• What's the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the upper classes were thoroughly sceptical, despairing, negative. Why? Among other reasons, because they were the only people who could afford to eat too much meat. Now there's cheap Canterbury lamb and Argentine chilled beef. Even the poor can afford to poison themselves into complete scepticism and despair.

  Aldous Huxley

  Past, Class, People

  Aldous Huxley (1955). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• I must remind you that our credulity is not to be measured by the truth of the things we believe. When men believed that the earthwas flat, they were not credulous: they were using their common sense, and, if asked to prove that the earth was flat, would have said simply, "Look at it." Those who refuse to believe that it is round are exercising a wholesome skepticism.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Believe, Exercise, Men

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.3199, e-artnow

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• The city of truth cannot be built on the swampy ground of skepticism.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Cities, Built

  Albert Schweitzer (1953). “Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography: Postscript 1932-1949 by Everett Skillings”

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• But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which thequickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.

  Laurence Sterne

  Knowledge, Loss, Dark

  Laurence Sterne (1847). “Works, Containing the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, Sermons, Letters and C”, p.185

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• Skepticism is only a time-based reality, and as an ultimate reality, it's always wrong, because everything always happens.

  Kevin Shields

  Reality, Always Wrong, Ultimate

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Those people who say that America is finite are some sense right. The environmental movement, for example, has a great wisdom to it: we need to protect, to preserve, to shelter as much as we need to develop. But I think this always has to be juxtaposed against the optimism of old, which is now represented in part by immigrants. I would like to see America achieve a kind of balance between optimism and tragedy, between possibility and skepticism.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Thinking, America, Optimism

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• There is at least this to be said for mind, that it can dispel mind.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Mind, Said

  Samuel Beckett, Ruby Cohn (1983). “Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment”, Calder Publications Limited

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• It's so much harder than it looks - to conjure a fictional world that some passing wolf of skepticism can't just blow down in one breath.

  William Finnegan

  Blow, Looks, World

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• As to how I would guide someone who is confused about the idea of God, I would suggest that he or she begins identifying what one might called "philosophical friends," - people with whom one could seriously examine our thought about God through listening to each other, reading important and useful books together and trying to think for oneself while familiarizing oneself with the ideas of some of the world's great thinkers. Cultivate openness without gullibility and skepticism without cynicism.

  Jacob Needleman

  Confused, Book, Philosophical

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

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• I have a deep-seated skepticism about the morality of violence. Violence is almost always morally corrosive.

  Michael Hastings

  Violence, Morality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The hallmark of religion is to distrust claims made for mortal men. It is in ages of great religious faith that great skepticism can find expression.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Religious, Men, Expression

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• I think the appropriate kind of skepticism is this: you've got to be asking questions all the time, you've also got to make sure that you're doing so in the spirit of genuinely wanting to find the answers - and that also means being open. I battle with this: I know I tend to be very skeptical and as a result, I veer towards the dismissive. But being aware of the tendency, I like to challenge my own skepticism and make sure it's not just knee-jerk. You need to be skeptical towards yourself as well. When you're only skeptical outwards you've got an unbalanced skepticism.

  Julian Baggini

  Mean, Thinking, Challenges

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.

  William James

  Attitude, Details, Logic

  William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.75, 谷月社

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• The chief problem is, of course, whether the marching of the general spirit of things is heading consciously or sub- consciously toward an idea of extension of boundaries.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  War, Ideas, Spirit

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• Scepticismcan never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill.

  George Eliot

  Standstill

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• The Holy Ghost is not a Sceptic, and He has not inscribed in our hearts uncertain opinions, but, rather, affirmations of the strongest sorts.

  Martin Luther

  Heart, Opinion, Affirmation

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• Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.

  Scott Adams

  Self, Views, Healthy

  Scott Adams (2004). “God's Debris: A Thought Experiment”, p.73, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• The only way of salvation for the world is by returning to thy allegiance.... Firm in my faith, I shall have force to withstand my evil counsellors, my skepticism, which leads me to doubt of the people, my restless spirit which, after truth has been brought to light, impels to go on searching for it.

  Ernest Renan

  Light, People, Evil

  Ernest Renan (1883). “Recollections of My Youth”

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