Skepticism Quotes - Page 20

• The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large sections of the American people.

  C. L. R. James

  Depression, People, Profound

  "In the International Tradition:Tasks Ahead for American Labor" by C. L. R. James, 1944.

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• Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Truth, Discovery, Tools

  Sydney J. Harris (1953). “Strictly personal”

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• A proclivity for science is embedded deeply within us, in all times, places, and cultures. It has been the means for our survival. It is our birthright. When, through indifference, inattention, incompetence, or fear of skepticism, we discourage children from science, we are disenfranchisin g them, taking from them the tools needed to manage their future.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Mean, Survival

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• The story of Ramakrishna is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face.... In this age of skepticism Ramakrishna presents an example of a bright and living faith which gives solace to thousands of men and women who would otherwise have remained without spiritual light.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Men, Light

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Homage to the Departed”

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• Skepticism is not a position; it's a process.

  Michael Shermer

  Process, Position

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• Religion is an act of sedition against reason. Whatever religion is most seductive and likely to draw in victims to surrender their skepticism is the worst.

  PZ Myers

  Atheist, Seductive, Surrender

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• ...As Thomas Kuhn pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new scientific theories in any field are regarded with skepticism because scientists become attached to the old perspective earlier in their careers.

  Marilyn Ferguson

  Dark, Careers, Perspective

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• This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"

  Michel de Montaigne

  Understanding, Asking, Notion

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• What are the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism is a sin.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Government, People

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.17

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• I've encountered a lot of people who sound like critics but very few who have substantive criticisms. There is a lot of skepticism, but it seems to be more a matter of inertia than it is of people having some real reason for thinking something else.

  K. Eric Drexler

  Real, Thinking, People

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• Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Wisdom, Practicals

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Wallace E. Williams, Joseph Slater (1987). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men: seven lectures”, p.89, Harvard University Press

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• There is a horrifying loneliness at work in this time. No, listen to me. We lived six and seven to a room in those days, when I was still among the living. The city streets were seas of humanity; and now in these high buildings dim-witted souls hover in luxurious privacy, gazing through the television window at a faraway world of kissing and touching. It is bound to produce some great fund of common knowledge, some new level of human awareness, a curious skepticism, to be so alone.

  Anne Rice

  Loneliness, Kissing, Sea

  Anne Rice (2010). “The Queen of the Damned”, p.83, Ballantine Books

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• And yet one can't forever stand on the shore; at some point, even if filled with indecision, skepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere.

  Arthur Miller

  Forever, Doubt, Life Is

  "The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller".

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• I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

  Lord Byron

  Doubt, Paganism, Deny

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