Skeptical Quotes - Page 5

• Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Clarity, Wilderness, Feels

  Cheryl Strayed (2012). “Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found”, p.128, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I was born into a working class Irish Catholic family at the brutal bottom of the Great Depression. I suppose this early imprinting and conditioning made me a life-long radical. My education was mostly scientific, majoring in electrical engineering and applied math. Those imprints made me a life-long rationalist. I have become increasingly skeptical about, or detached from, the assumption that radicalism and rationalism are the only correct perspectives with which to view life, but they remain my favorite perspectives.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Math, Views, Engineering

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

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• Cynicism and skepticism are the crudest form of quasi-intellectualism... Let the cynic become cynical of his cynicism and the skeptic skeptical of his skepticism and join the battle.

  R. C. Sproul

  Cynical, Battle, Cynicism

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• There’s something really powerful about groups and shared experiences. People might be skeptical about their ability to change if they’re by themselves, but a group will convince them to suspend disbelief. A community creates belief.

  Charles Duhigg

  Powerful, People, Community

  Charles Duhigg (2012). “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change”, p.85, Random House

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• One of the main reasons is that most Sunday school curricula only teaches disconnected Bible stories. They don't teach how we know the Bible is true, how to defend the faith, and how to answer the skeptical questions of today.

  Ken Ham

  School, Sunday, Stories

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• I'm skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education.... People are on these tracks. They are getting these credentials and it's very unclear how viable they are in many cases.

  Peter Thiel

  Fall, People, Track

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• I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular.

  Errol Morris

  Behavior, Ability, Humans

  "The Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist". Lecture by Errol Morris, errolmorris.com.

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• The ultimate end is a nation that lies under the concept of the Declaration of Indepen dence. The Declaration of Independence is such an extraordinary statement - it was designed by people skeptical of government, local or national, but in particular national.

  Malcolm Wallop

  Lying, Government, People

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• An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.

  Bill Moyers

  Lying, Fighting, Media

  Bill Moyers (2008). “Moyers on Democracy”, p.218, Anchor

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• I do worry about the press and a President Trump. You know, I think it's dangerous the entire de-legitimization that he's engaged in against all of the media because the people, as much as it's fun to hate us, they do need us. You know, they need good, strong skeptical journalists to be covering whoever it is, whether it's Barack Obama or President Donald Trump.

  Megyn Kelly

  Strong, Fun, Hate

  Source: www.npr.org

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• The one thing that you can say about the new Cabinet Donald Trump is putting together. That seems to be one of the coherent themes. They're very, very skeptical about Iran.

  Geoff Dyer

  Together

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I'm more or less skeptical about marriage, because of family ties, relations between children and parents - it's all so depressing.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Depressing, Children, Ties

  Source: scrapsfromtheloft.com

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• The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me a compelling argument for religious reverence rather than skeptical empiricism as a response to life's meaning.

  David Foster Wallace

  Religious, Powerful, Connections

  "All That" by David Foster Wallace, www.newyorker.com. December 14, 2009.

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• Market bashers ... might understand the claim that in some particular field, markets required no intervention--though they'd be skeptical--but the notion that, on general principle, complex systems ran themselves just fine without benign intervention seemed like it could only be the product of a quasi-religious faith. ... Of course, this gets things almost precisely backwards. It is the idea that all order must be explained by a functioning mind at the helm, not its denial, that has the closet affinity to the religious instinct.

  Julian Sanchez

  Religious, Order, Ideas

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• The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical. . . . Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.

  Bergen Evans

  Men, Humanity, Religion

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• The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.

  Bergen Evans

  Trust, Wisdom, Men

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• Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly....As a scientist I remain skeptical.

  Joanne Simpson

  Organization, Receiving, Global Warming

  "Buying the Vacant Illinois Senate Seat?" by Brit Hume, www.foxnews.com. December 10, 2008.

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• Scientists like Bjorn Lomborg in The Skeptical Environmentalist have, in my opinion, properly nailed environmental extremists for these exaggerated scenarios.

  Michael Shermer

  Environmental, Opinion, Global Warming

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• Men and women cannot rest content with a superficial and unquestioning exchange of skeptical opinions and experiences of life - all of us are in search of truth and we share this profound yearning today more than ever.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

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• People confuse the word cynicism with the word skepticism. One is “you’re not gonna pay attention to anything, think everything’s screwed up, nothing’s ever gonna work out right”, that’s cynicism. But skepticism is, “you’re presented with evidence and you do your best to draw conclusions based on that”. So, as the saying goes, Bill Nye, do you believe in ghosts? No. However, I would love to see one. Bring it on. I’m open minded to the idea, but the more I look into it in a skeptical frame of thinking, the less likely it seems.

  Bill Nye

  Believe, Thinking, Ideas

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• I've always been very skeptical about marriage, because I only want to do it once; I want to do it the right way.

  Sandra Bullock

  Want, Way, Right Way

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• If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.

  Carl Sagan

  Religious, Political, Rambling

  Interview with Charlie Rose, May 27, 1996.

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• Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through past prejudice, his duty becomes part of his nature.

  Edmund Burke

  Past, Men, Decision

  Edmund Burke (1963). “Edmund Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches”, p.559, Transaction Publishers

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• In Kafka we have the modern mind, seemingly self-sufficient, intelligent, skeptical, ironical, splendidly trained for the great game of pretending that the world it comprehends in sterilized sobriety is the only and ultimate real one – yet a mind living in sin with the soul of Abraham. Thus he knows Two things at once, and both with equal assurance: that there is no God, and that there must be God.

  Erich Heller

  Real, Intelligent, Self

  Erich Heller (1975). “Franz Kafka”, Viking Pr

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• Those who have experienced good and bad luck many times have every reason to be skeptical of successes

  Thucydides

  Luck, Reason, Modern

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