Skeptic Quotes - Page 9

• True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Dreamer

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.6, Modern Library

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• Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.

  Bertrand Russell

  Belief, Stoic, Needed

  Bertrand Russell (1971). “Bertrand Russell's best: silhouettes in satire”, Allen & Unwin

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• People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupid, Believe, Intelligent

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• The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Diversity, Soul, Scoffers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.391, Library of America

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• At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Christian, Dog

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• When I sent out a casual and nonscientific poll of my own to a wide cast of acquaintances, friends and colleagues, I was surprised, but not really, to learn that maybe 60 percent claimed a belief in a God of some sort, including people I would have bet were unregenerate skeptics. Others just shrugged. They don't think about this stuff. It doesn't matter to them. They can't know, they won't beat themselves up trying to know and for that matter they don't care if their kids believe or not.

  Natalie Angier

  Believe, Kids, Thinking

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• The skeptics who say it can't be done are simply in extremely limited states of mind. They can't even perceive the possibility of anybody doing something that they can't do.

  Frederick Lenz

  Mind, Done, Possibility

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• "The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Atheism, Ghost, Holy

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• Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.

  Garrett Hardin

  Religious, Believe, Book

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• The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.

  Paul Kurtz

  Promise, Atheism, Belief

  Paul Kurtz (1986). “The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal”

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• I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.

  George Carlin

  Thinking, Realist, Cynic

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Tim Keller's ministry in New York City is leading a generation of seekers and skeptics toward belief in God. I thank God for him.

  Billy Graham

  New York, Cities, Thank God

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• When confronted with a demand that the universe have a cause, infidels have usually pointed out that God was not much of an explanation. This is true enough, but not really a positive argument. After mechanistic explanation became popular, infidels liked to restrict causality to the chain of causes in an eternal material universe, pointing out that no supernatural cause was then necessary. Plausible, but still rather defensive. Today's skeptic can do better. In all likelihood, the universe is uncaused. It is random. It just is.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Demand, Causality

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• I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares about how we are or what we do. ... Religious skeptics often become very bitter towards the end, as did Mark Twain. ... I know why I will become bitter. I will finally realize that I have had it right all along: that I will not see God, that there is no heaven or Judgement Day.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Religious, Heaven, Judgement

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• There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Weakness, Ears, Assumption

  Margaret Oliphant (1876). “Phoebe, Junior0: A Last Chronicle of Carlingford : in Two Volumes”, p.40

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• [Science] has challenged the super-eminence of religion; it has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which clings to its skirts; it has thrown contempt on all learning that does not depend on it; and it has bribed the skeptics by giving us immense material comforts.

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Philosophy, Doors, Giving

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

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• I go to church because I am a skeptic in regard to my own skepticism.

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Church, Skepticism, Regard

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• Several decades ago, a detachment of the American right cut itself loose from reason, and it has been drifting along happily ever since. If the birthers are more evidently kooky than the global-warming "skeptics" or the death-panellers or the supply-siders or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, they are, in their fundamental disregard for the facts, actually mainstream.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Cutting, Fundamentals, Facts

  "The Things People Say" by Elizabeth Kolbert, www.newyorker.com. November 2, 2009.

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• Cops never took anything on faith, and disbelieved every story that was told them on principle until and unless they could confirm that the story was fact in all its essentials, and even then remained wary and unconvinced. Cop shops bred skeptics. Skeptics cherished few illusions about human nature, and therefore were seldom disappointed.

  Dana Stabenow

  Stories, Facts, Principles

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• I'm a skeptic. I'm not a scientist. I think the science has been politicized.

  Jeb Bush

  Thinking, Scientist, Has Beens

  "13 Republican Climate Deniers Who Want to Be President" by Ben Adler, www.motherjones.com. August 21, 2014.

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• Skeptics always want miracles such as stepping down from the Cross, but never the greater miracle of forgiveness.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Miracle, Want, Crosses

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• Had this author [Sir W Drummond Academical Questions, chap. iii.], instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Guilt, Atheism, Modesty

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2015). “The Necessity of Atheism”, p.12, Booklassic

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• All that stock of arguments [the skeptics] produce to depreciate our faculties, and make mankind appear ignorant and low, are drawn principally from this head, to wit, that we are under an invincible blindness as to the true and real nature of things.

  George Berkeley

  Real, Ignorant, Argument

  George Berkeley (1982). “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge ...”, p.62, Hackett Publishing

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• Serious skeptics, true believers, and seekers of every stripe will want to read Mitch Horowitz's vibrant, probing, and richly researched account of the impact of the positive-thinking movement on every aspect of American life today. Filled with a cast of remarkable characters and many lively tales, One Simple Idea is a readable, responsible examination of the limits and possibilities of mind-power as a source of constructive transformation.

  Judith Viorst

  Character, Positive Thinking, Simple

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• The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Men, Thinking

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