Skepticism Quotes - Page 9

• Skepticism is forever whispering in your ears. You're very new at this. You may be mistaken. You've been wrong before.

  D. J. Grothe

  Humility, Forever, Whispering

  6 Copy quote

• Just enough of that to be able to give the reader a sense of skepticism that all - it seemed like all that was necessary. I don't really care. But what I do care about is what was happening within the realm of automobiles at the time that [Buckminster Fuller] invented his Dymaxion car because that is really relevant.

  Jonathon Keats

  Car, Giving, Able

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding

  Jacob Bronowski

  Wisdom, Nature, Men

  Universities Quarterly (1956) vol. 10, no. 3, p. 252

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• All scientific progress requires a climate of strong skepticism.

  Jerry A. Coyne

  Strong, Progress, Climate

  7 Copy quote

• Skepticism is provisional, even if it lasts a lifetime.

  Jose Bergamin

  Healthy, Lasts, Lifetime

  4 Copy quote

• He gave a dark chuckle. “But you’re not, so you had absolutely no qualms about kneeing me in the groin, right?” “I hit your thigh!” “Oh, please. A man doesn’t need that long to recover from a knee to the thigh,” he replied, his voice full of skepticism.

  Kiera Cass

  Dark, Men, Voice

  5 Copy quote

• Skepticism is history's bedfellow.

  Edgar Saltus

  History, Bedfellows

  10 Copy quote

• I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Science, Religion

  77 Copy quote

• If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Acceptance, Ideas

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.391, Ballantine Books

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Maturity, Our World

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.4096, Delphi Classics

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• [This approach] displays the characteristic philosophical lust to vanquish the skeptic by arguing him out of his skepticism, without appeal to moral and political considerations or to the facts of everyday life. [...] But more often than not, if you give the skeptic everything he wants, then he will be successful in repulsing your attacks and terrorizing your position.

  Dale Jamieson

  Philosophical, Successful, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.

  William James

  Believe, Science, Deception

  William James (1986). “Essays in Psychical Research”, p.22, Harvard University Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Data, Support You

  "The Burden of Skepticism" by Carl Sagan, 1987.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.

  Thucydides

  Science, Men, Logic

  45 Copy quote

• I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Religious, Believe, Science

  Neil deGrasse Tyson (2000). “The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist”, Doubleday Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.

  Thomas Paine

  Change, Freedom, Equality

  Thomas Paine (2015). “The Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies”, p.222, Ravenio Books

  151 Copy quote

  Show source

• I used to be skeptical when educators and technologists predicted that we may be entering a new era of oral culture, in which audible information will be at least as important as visible information. Now that I have adopted into my own daily life a device that makes music and spoken-word files easy to access from anywhere, I have tempered my skepticism.

  Tom Peters

  Important, Entering, May

  Source: www.researchgate.net

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If mankind is to profit freely from the small and sporadic crop of the heroically gifted it produces, it will have to cultivate the delicate art of handling ideas. Psychology is now able to tell us with reasonable assurance that the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought and to new ideas is fear; and fear which can with inimitable art disguise itself as caution, or sanity, or reasoned skepticism, or on occasion even as courage.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Art, Freedom, Hero

  6 Copy quote

• I don't think of myself as particularly earnest. I have long bouts of cynicism and skepticism. So much of my early life was full of uncertainties. It still is. My "Buddha book" expresses that. Perhaps that's what created this impression of earnestness.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Book, Thinking, Long

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a conservative, I maintain a healthy skepticism of the theory of man-made global warming. I also believe that more people enjoying the fruits of modernity and economic development is a good thing - as long as those people arrived legally and obey the law.

  Gary Bauer

  Believe, Men, Law

  17 Copy quote

• The modern world tends to be skeptical about everything that makes demands on man's higher faculties. But it is not at all skeptical about skepticism, which demands hardly anything.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Men, World, Demand

  7 Copy quote

• Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency--the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Powerful, Rap, Exercise

  4 Copy quote

• Like belief, doubt takes a lot of different forms, from ancient Skepticism to modern scientific empiricism, from doubt in many gods to doubt in one God, to doubt that recreates and enlivens faith and doubt that is really disbelief.

  Jennifer Michael Hecht

  Doubt, Different, Belief

  7 Copy quote

• A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

  Emile Durkheim

  Strong, Ignorance, Risk

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.245, Routledge

  154 Copy quote

  Show source

• Skepticism relieved two terrible diseases that afflicted mankind: anxiety and dogmatism.

  Sextus Empiricus

  Two, Anxiety, Disease

  23 Copy quote