Quotes About Skepticism

The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism - which foretells a coming change. As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.

I encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.

...it is absurd to try to confine our knowledge and belief to matters which are conclusively established by sound deductive arguments. The demand for certainty will inevitably be disappointed, leaving skepticism in command of almost every issue.

I used to be skeptical when educators and technologists predicted that we may be entering a new era of oral culture, in which audible information will be at least as important as visible information. Now that I have adopted into my own daily life a device that makes music and spoken-word files easy to access from anywhere, I have tempered my skepticism.

It's frightening that skepticism has to be a movement, because you're just arguing that reality is reality. What a waste of energy, in a way.

Francis [Collins] keeps saying things like "From the perspective of a believer." Once you buy into the position of faith, then suddenly you find yourself losing all of your natural skepticism and your scientific - really scientific - credibility. I'm sorry to be so blunt.

Investors should start with a view of skepticism. They should become intellectual investors rather than emotional investors. They should be careful, and they should be skeptical.

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.

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.

The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.

The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster.

This was the first time we had two ex-Soviet Cosmonauts in Houston. A lot of us, including me, viewed it with some skepticism, because I grew up during the Cold War, so I had been hit with all this propaganda all along that their stuff wasn't that good, it wasn't that safe and we were so much better. What I found out later was that their space stuff was very good and good enough that I was certainly comfortable flying on their equipment. So, it was kind of a revelation of sorts as the years went by and I think it underscores the importance right now of international cooperation.

Sweet Skepticism of the Heart That knows and does not know And tosses like a Fleet of Balm Affronted by the snow.

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

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.

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

Skepticism is only a time-based reality, and as an ultimate reality, it's always wrong, because everything always happens.

Skepticism is my nature, freethought is my methodology, agnosticism is my conclusion after 25 years of being in the ministry, and atheism is my opinion.

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

The fact that Newton and Michael Faraday and other scientists of the past were deeply religious shows that religious skepticism is not a prejudice that governed science from the beginning, but a lesson that has been learned through centuries of experience in the study of nature.

On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.

One needs the invented, the spontaneous, the impromptu for ritual. Skepticism, that grain of salt, is inappropriate.

Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.

I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs. My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards. But my assessment, and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. In the abstract, you can complain about 'Big Brother' and how this is a potential program run amok. But when you actually look at the details, then, I think we've struck the right balance.

Education must enable young people to effect what they have recognized to be right, despite hardships, despite dangers, despite inner skepticism, despite boredom, and despite mockery from the world. . . .

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.

Pardon me, but there’s someone on the phone who says they have a call for you.” There’s a call to tell me I have a call?” he asked with heavy skepticism.