Skepticism Quotes - Page 14

• 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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• 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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• 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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• The sceptics, a kind of nomads, despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from time to time all civil society. Fortunately their number was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though without any fixed plan or agreement.

  Immanuel Kant

  Agreement, Land, Numbers

  Immanuel Kant (1915). “Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of Its First Publication”

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• The real essence, the internal qualities, and constitution of even the meanest object, is hid from our view; something there is inevery drop of water, every grain of sand, which it is beyond the power of human understanding to fathom or comprehend. But it is evidentthat we are influenced by false principles to that degree as to mistrust our senses, and think we know nothing of those things which we perfectly comprehend.

  George Berkeley

  Real, Thinking, Views

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• The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of any one, who feeling inhimself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm'd with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  David Hume (2012). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.221, Courier Corporation

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• It seems certain, that though a man, in a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the many contradictions and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion, it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours.

  David Hume

  Men, Reflection, Imperfection

  David Hume, Peter Millican (2008). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.153, Oxford University Press

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• [The sceptic] must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles to prevail.All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.

  David Hume

  Men, Principles, Action

  David Hume (1788). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.162

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• The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.

  David Hume

  Principles, Employment, Occupation

  David Hume (2013). “Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects”, p.214, Broadview Press

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• There is, indeed a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are corrected by common sense and reflection.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Reflection, Common Sense

  David Hume, Eric Steinberg (1993). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature”, p.111, Hackett Publishing

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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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• 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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• 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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• An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.

  Laurence Sterne

  Atheist, Ignorance, Superstitions

  Laurence Sterne (1790). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Complete in Eight Volumes”, p.146

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• As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

  Richard Rorty

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Swings

  "Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3". Book by Richard Rorty (Introduction), March 13, 1998.

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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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• The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faith, Truth, Honesty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.107, Harvard University Press

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• The new statement will comprise the skepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For, skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of them, just as much as must include the oldest beliefs.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Belief

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Selected Writings”, p.181, Simon and Schuster

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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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