Skeptic Quotes - Page 9

• 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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• 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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• 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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• Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

  Douglas Adams

  Beauty, Beautiful, Religious

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.79, Pan Macmillan

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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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• Do you know...what I think is a great pity? It is this: that we have all become such skeptics that we hardly believe what our pious grandmothers told us.

  Isak Dinesen

  Believe, Grandmother, Thinking

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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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• I would say that Barack Obama has always been a real optimist about what can be accomplished. He believes that government can be used to create systemic, long-term, real change. And the first lady is more of a skeptic.

  Jodi Kantor

  Real, Believe, Government

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• I'm a big skeptic so I won't just go off what an individual may tell me. I gotta do the research. I'ma get different literature on that one subject and just compare and contrast. I do my own selective studies.

  Kevin Gates

  Different, Research, Literature

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

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Church, Skepticism, Regard

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.

  Joris-Karl Huysmans

  Christian, Believe, Heart

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• Everyone - pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist - has to answer these questions: 'Where did I come from? What is life's meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die?' Those are the fulcrum points of our existence.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Atheist, Answers, What Is Life

  "Christian Worldview". Interview with Julia Duin, www.washingtontimes.com. July 03, 2003.

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• Look, I don't know whether God exists. I don't know that. And I tell you one thing, I am not frightened of my beliefs. If there is a God who is threatening me with damnation because I don't believe in Him, so be it. I've lived my life in conscience, and I will suffer damnation willingly in conscience against a tyrannical God who would damn me because, on the basis of the intelligence He gave me, I have come to a conclusion doubting His existence, and I will continue to be a skeptic all of my life.

  Alan Dershowitz

  Believe, If There Is A God, Doubt

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• Nature confuses the skeptics and reason confutes the dogmatists

  Blaise Pascal

  Nature, Reason

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• Lovely was the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power, He on the thought-benighted Skeptic beamed Manifest Godhead.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Lovely, Christ, Holy

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1856). “The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an Introductory Essay Upon His Philosophical and Theological Opinions”, p.72

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• Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game.

  Matt Taibbi

  Apology, Player, Hands

  "Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever". Article by Matt Taibbi, www.rollingstone.com. April 25, 2013.

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