quotations about skepticism
Trying to debunk skeptics never works, and perhaps now we know why. Conspiracy theorists don't join social networks to learn, they join them to hear comforting reinforcements of their own ideas. And if you disrupt their happy place with scientific facts, you're not going to get very far.
JOSHUA A. KRISCH
"Why Facebook Is A Hotbed For Conspiracy Theories", Vocativ, June 18, 2016
Where is the questioning? Where is the protest song?
Since when is skepticism un-American?
Dissent's not treason but they talk like it's the same
Those who disagree are afraid to show their face
SLEATER-KINNEY
"Combat Rock"
Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion.
SCOTT ADAMS
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
A thousand skeptic hands won't keep us from the things we plan
Unless we're clinging to the things we prize
HOWARD JONES
"Things Can Only Get Better"
A skeptic, I would ask for consistency first of all.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
If skepticism is the basis of knowledge, as such, then it actually says that refusing to infer from the particular we actually reassert the existence of the general.
ALEXANDER MITJASHIN
Liberalism and Skepticism
Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind.
JOHN DEWEY
The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, Education, Democracy
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?
A healthy dose of skepticism is always necessary in the age of misinformed consumerism.
SINCLAIRE SPARKMAN
"1,000 ways to diet", Lebanon Democrat, August 11, 2017
To have a solid foundation of skepticism -- that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life.
REMY DE GOURMONT
Philosophic Nights in Paris
I conceive the skeptical writers to be a set of men whose business it is to pick holes in the fabric of knowledge wherever it is weak and faulty; and when these places are properly repaired, the whole building becomes more firm and solid than it was formerly.
THOMAS REID
The Works of Thomas Reid
After all, if no one is happy who does not have what he wants and if the skeptics are always seeking the truth, but do not find it, they cannot be happy. Furthermore, the skeptics claim that their wise man is happy, and yet he cannot be happy since he does not have what he wants.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Trilogy on Faith and Happiness
Apathy increasing where skepticism once prevailed
Ignorance covering the youth like a bride's white veil
DANCE HALL CRASHERS
"Blind Leading the Blind"
Absolute relativism, which is neither more nor less than skepticism, in the most modern sense of the term, is the supreme triumph of the reasoning reason.
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
The Tragic Sense of Life
Rabid suspicion has nothing in it of skepticism. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.
ERIC HOFFER
The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms
Through a vicious circle of pure reason skepsis itself becomes dogma.
JOHANN GEORG HAMANN
Briefwechsel
He walks with angels in his picket
They tell him what to do
His shopping cart's filled with newspapers
And thirty-six discarded shoes
He's met with heavy skepticism
Messiahs don't come everyday
Shopping cart Jesus
He wants to talk to you
58
"Shopping Cart Jesus"
As the ages passed so little evidence remained
We turned to mysticism for the unexplained
The modern day has made the skepticism grow
When comes Millennium the world will finally know
CAGE
"Unveiled"
There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
letter to Armando Garcia Jr., December 11, 1985
Suffer not your faith to be shaken by the sophistries of skeptics.
S. CLARKE
attributed, Day's Collacon