Skepticism Quotes

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Never trust anything you read in a travel article.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

Skepticism, is that anything more than we used to mean when we said, Well, what have we here?

Travelling expands the mind rarely.

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant.

I grow more and more suspicious of the political powers that take men away from their work and set them shooting one another.

Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is, I dunno. If The Eiffel Tower were now to represent the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that the skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno.

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

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come, when you do call for them?

Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.

As for Lindbergh, another eminent servant of science, all he proved by his gaudy flight across the Atlantic was that God takes care of those who have been so fortunate as to come into the world foolish. Expressing skepticism that adventure does not necessarily contribute to scientific knowledge.

Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.

I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.

Nothing's so apt to undermine your confidence in a product as knowing that the commercial selling it has been approved by the company that makes it.

In that kind of environment, where there's so much skepticism about information that's coming in, we're gonna have to spend a lot more time thinking about how do we protect our democratic process.

What does all this stuff about flying saucers amount to? What can it mean? What is the truth?

The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure'.

You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting.You can lead a boy to college but you cannot make him think.

If it's the Psychic Network why do they need a phone number?

...I will not allow books to prove any thing." "But how shall we prove any thing?" "We never shall.

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word "cynic" has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. "George, you're cynical." Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist. And perhaps the flame still flickers a little, you know?

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

When I hear a person talking about political solutions, I know I am not listening to a serious person.

Those people have seen 'something'. What it is I do not know and I can not care to know.

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.

The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.

First rule in this world baby... don't believe ANYTHING you see on the news.

Either they're trying to con you or they're trying to con themselves.

This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time.

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.

My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me.

Do not trust any statistics you did not fake yourself.

The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.

Nature confuses the skeptics and reason confutes the dogmatists

It is nearly 50 years since I was assured by a conclave of doctors that if I did not eat meat I should die of starvation.

Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.

One should not be deceived: great spirits are skeptics ... Strength, FREEDOM which is born of the strength and overstrength of the spirit, proves itself by skepticism. Men of conviction are not worthy of the least consideration in fundamental questions of value and disvalue. Convictions are prisons.

Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.

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.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

I'm certainly a skeptic. I always quibble with people.

All talk of winning the people by appealing to their intelligence, of conquering them by impeccable syllogism, is so much moonshine.

There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.

Believe everything you read

It is not worth while to strain one's self to tell the truth to people who habitually discount everything you tell them, whether it is true or isn't.

Although individuals may be highly intelligent, they are sometimes dogged by skepticism and doubts. They are clever, but they tend to be hesitant and skeptical and are never really able to settle down. These people are the least receptive.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

Great intellects are skeptical.