Skepticism Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Skepticism". There are currently 3 quotes in our collection about Skepticism. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Skepticism!
The best sayings about Skepticism that you can share on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and other social networks!
  • Old age is the lubricant of belief. When death knocks at the door, skepticism flies out the window. A serious cardiovascular fright and a person will even believe in Little Red Riding Hood.

    Believe   Doors   Age  
  • The sceptic only stumbles at matter of fact.

  • I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.

    Wisdom   Attitude   Taken  
    Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, John Junkerman, Takei Masakazu (2015). “Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force”, p.5, Routledge
  • 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.

  • 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.

    Men   Spirit   Prison  
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.385, Penguin
  • The hallmark of religion is to distrust claims made for mortal men. It is in ages of great religious faith that great skepticism can find expression.

    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • I just think that the skepticism about truth has almost completely flipped - from being something associated with generally left-leaning progressives to being something which is a tool of right-wing populists and demagogues. I think a lot of those people writing books ten years ago would now think those books are no longer needed, they've kind of been vindicated.

    Book   Writing   Thinking  
    Source: www.3ammagazine.com
  • Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.

  • Trust is tough. Once trust has been broken by multiple people on multiple occasions, believing in anyone or anything becomes increasingly difficult. Much of the skepticism of our world can be traced back to broken trust.

  • Fifteen years of skepticism has done more for me than 20 years of force-fed religion and 30 years of indifference in between.

    Years   Atheism   Done  
  • Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

    Keys   Agents   Evolution  
  • Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue.

  • It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

    Death   Witty   Atheist  
    Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.32, Ballantine Books
  • Like belief, doubt takes a lot of different forms, from ancient Skepticism to modern scientific empiricism, from doubt in many gods to doubt in one God, to doubt that recreates and enlivens faith and doubt that is really disbelief.

  • There is nothing disastrous in the temporary nature of our ideas. They are always that. But there may very easily be a train of evil in the self-deception which regards them as final. I think God will forgive us our skepticism sooner than our Inquisitions.

    Thinking   Self   Ideas  
    Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”
  • Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding

    Wisdom   Nature   Men  
    Universities Quarterly (1956) vol. 10, no. 3, p. 252
  • In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total agreement.

    Funny   God   Atheist  
  • There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.

    Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL - Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future: The Critique of the Traditional Morality and the Philosophy of the Past”, p.76, e-artnow
  • The skepticism that has grown up about elites is totally justified. Since 2008, no one has gone to jail on Wall Street for the crash and elites have not been able to fix the problem, right? We haven't managed to fix post manufacturing job growth. We haven't fixed the issues to do with immigration.

    Source: www.nbcnews.com
  • Sceptics are generally ready to believe anything, provided it is sufficiently improbable.

  • These matters require what I think of as the Shakespearean cast of thought. That is to say, a fine credulity about everything, kept in check by a lively skepticism about everything.... It keeps you constantly alert to every possibility.

    Robertson Davies (1991). “Murther and Walking Spirits”, Penguin Group USA
  • There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery.

    Science   Discovery   Two  
    "Nuclear Principles in Engineering". Book by Tatjana Jevremovic, 2005.
  • There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

    Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.25, Simon and Schuster
  • 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, Peter Millican (2008). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.153, Oxford University Press
  • Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

    Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.359, University of Georgia Press
  • The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

    Frank Herbert (2008). “God Emperor of Dune”, p.150, Penguin
  • People are not "things" to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not "human resources." They are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting them. We must examine the concept of leading and following with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and subordinate with increasing skepticism. We must examine the concept of management and labor with new beliefs. And we must examine the nature of organizations that demand such distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.

    Dee Hock, VISA International (1999). “Birth of the Chaordic Age”, p.73, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
  • The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don't have a congregation. We don't meet so it's a very flimsy tribe, but there's a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.

    Luxury   Doubt   Tribes  
    "Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. January 23, 2006.
  • Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.

  • 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 (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.374, Stanford University Press
Page of
We hope our collection of Skepticism quotes has inspired you! Our collection of sayings about Skepticism is constantly growing (today it includes 3 sayings from famous people about Skepticism), visit us more often and find new quotes from famous authors!
Share our collection of quotes on social networks – this will allow as many people as possible to find inspiring quotes about Skepticism!