Skepticism Quotes - Page 12

• This feeling African-Americans have, this skepticism towards the police and the skepticism that the police show towards African-Americans is actually quite old. And it may be one of the most durable aspects of the relationship between black people and their country really in our history.

  Ta-Nehisi Coates

  Country, People, African American

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom.

  Paul Kurtz

  Religious, Party, Communication

  Paul Kurtz (1983). “In defense of secular humanism”, Prometheus Books

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• The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hate, Dwelling, Innovation

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.264, Harvard University Press

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• One needs the invented, the spontaneous, the impromptu for ritual. Skepticism, that grain of salt, is inappropriate.

  E. M. Broner

  Grain Of Salt, Needs, Inappropriate

  E. M. Broner (1999). “Bringing Home the Light: A Jewish Woman's Handbook of Rituals”, Council Oaks Distribution

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• Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not see that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly,--but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Son, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.294, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.

  John Cowper Powys

  Attitude, Philosophy, Limitless

  "The Meaning of Culture". Book by John Cowper Powys, pp. 27-28, 1929.

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• Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.

  Thomas Huxley

  Fire, Doubt, Atheism

  "T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist, and Educator". Book by Cyril Bibby, p. 257, 1950.

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• I am all in favor of the skeptical mind. Do not believe anything unless you have experienced it. Do not believe anything - go on questioning, however long it takes.

  Rajneesh

  Believe, Long, Mind

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• ...the number of saintly men has not yet risen to the level where the census makes them a separate statistical category.

  George Stigler

  Men, Numbers, Levels

  George Joseph Stigler, Paul Anthony Samuelson (1963). “A Dialogue on the Proper Economic Role of the State”

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• The lack of brotherhood among believers themselves has paralyzed the church in front of the skepticism and immorality of the world; but when we go back in simple faith to the one great fact of our redemption, we shall be both brought into closer fellowship with each other, and stimulated to more tender regard for the salvation of men.

  William Mackergo Taylor

  Simple, Men, Brotherhood

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 111, 1895.

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• Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion

  Richard P. Feynman

  Reliability, Experts, Opinion

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• I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.

  William S. Burroughs

  Hero, Thinking, Blow

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.339, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Philosophy, Taken, Atheism

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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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• 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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• This a sacred rule we find
  Among the nicest of mankind,
  (Which never might exception brook
  From Hobbes even down to Bolingbroke,)
  To doubt of facts, however true,
  Unless they know the causes too.

  Charles Churchill

  Doubt, Might, Sacred

  Charles Churchill (1855). “The poetical works of Charles Churcill: With memoir, critical dissertation, and explanatory notes”, p.239

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• What Reagan ushered in was a skepticism toward government solutions to every problem. I don't think that has changed

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, Government, Problem

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• I readan article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children tobe skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.

  Brenda Ueland

  Faith, Pain, Attitude

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• The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and an undisguised repugnance for the mumbo-jumbo that's the curse of so much commentary on anything to do with economics or investment. A World of Wealth is not only a lively read, but an exceptionally enlightening and rewarding one to boot.

  Alan Abelson

  Healthy, Boots, World

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• There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion.

  Criss Jami

  Believe, Have Faith, Degrees

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.83, Criss Jami

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• Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Suicide, Lying, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.181, Graphic Arts Books

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• A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.

  William E. Gladstone

  Excess, Rivals, May

  "Homeric Synchronism: An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer". Book by William Ewart Gladstone, 1876.

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• Although I held public office for a total of sixteen years, I also thought of myself as a citizen-politician, not a career one. Every now and then when I was in government, I would remind my associates that "When we start thinking of government as 'us' instead of 'them,' we've been here too long." By that I mean that elected officeholders need to retain a certain skepticism about the perfectibility of government.

  Ronald Reagan

  Mean, Thinking, Government

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• It's only fashion that has said the pendulum has swung from extreme skepticism about extraterrestrial life to extreme credulity. The truth is somewhere in between.

  Paul Davies

  Fashion, Truth Is, Said

  "Big Think Interview With Paul Davies". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. April 15, 2010.

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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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