Skepticism Quotes - Page 10

• Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.

  Carrie Snow

  Believe, Science, Belief

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• I think I developed a culture of healthy skepticism of claims of certainty on any side of the aisle. A sort of boldness in using economics no matter where it leads you in political circles, you know, rather than worrying about being left-wing or right-wing or biased or this or that.

  David Plotz

  Thinking, Circles, Wings

  Source: www.slate.com

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• To believe in luck ... is skepticism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Believe, Luck

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• I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages:
  (i) this is worthless nonsense;
  (ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;
  (iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;
  (iv) I always said so.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Acceptance, Views, Interesting

  Journal of Genetics, Vol. 58, 1963.

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• People rise and fall to meet your level of expectations for them. If you express skepticism and doubt in others, they will return your lack of confidence with mediocrity. But if you believe in them and expect them to do well, they will go the extra mile trying to do their best.

  John C. Maxwell

  Believe, Fall, People

  John C. Maxwell, Jim Dornan (2013). “How to Influence People: Make a Difference in Your World”, p.37, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• With so many contradictory renditions of the biblical text, the public has lost confidence that we can actually know what the Bible says. It is an easy step from this skepticism to an indifference about what the Bible says.

  Leland Ryken

  Biblical, Steps, Indifference

  "Leland Ryken Interview: Differences in Bible Translations". Christian Publishing House Interview, christianpublishinghouse.co.

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• My humor is my creativity, and my skepticism is a gift.

  J Tillman

  Creativity

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• The downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large.

  Massimo Pigliucci

  Thinking, Ideas, Rejection

  Massimo Pigliucci (2010). “Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk”, p.75, University of Chicago Press

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• In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.

  John William Draper

  Country, Struggle, Fighting

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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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• I'm looking at everything with a clear eye and an attitude of acceptance rather than skepticism. I realized, this isn't a career - this is my life. This is what I do. It doesn't matter what the size of the role is. It matter that you're enjoying yourself. And I'm loving it.

  Jake Busey

  Attitude, Eye, Acceptance

  Source: www.esquire.com

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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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• Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.

  Henri Poincare

  Believe, Science, Reflection

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• Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.

  Steven Novella

  Weed, Ideas, Diversity

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• Skepticism doesn't help you hear.

  Seth Godin

  Helping

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• Enforced religion breeds precisely what it most fears: rebellion against religion, cynicism about religion, skepticism about its claims, and, as a consequence, indifference at best or outright antipathy at worst.

  Langdon Brown Gilkey

  Church, Indifference, Rebellion

  Langdon Gilkey, Langdon Brown Gilkey (1985). “Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock”, p.11, University of Virginia Press

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• Extreme skepticism and extreme gullibility are two equal ways of not having to think at all. And I don't think I'm the first to say that.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Thinking, Two, Way

  Source: www.npr.org

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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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• 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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• 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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• We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy.

  Alexander Herzen

  Believe, Soul, Trials

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• Well, I had a small degree, that little infection of skepticism about America which resides in the minds of even America's closest friends. That America can't be quite as good as it says it is. And why does it need so relentlessly to keep saying how good it is?

  Robert MacNeil

  America, Mind, Degrees

  "Journalist Robert MacNeil: 'Looking For My Country'". Interview With Judy Woodruff, www.cnn.com. May 16, 2003.

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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 encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.

  Tim Ferriss

  People, Trying, Steps

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