Skepticism Quotes · Page 4

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

— Albert Einstein

Sometimes the mind has all the facts but the heart refuse to believe them.

— Nishan Panwar

Skepticism is provisional, even if it lasts a lifetime.

— Jose Bergamin

“Information without truth bred skepticism; skepticism without truth bred submission.”

— Brutus

Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

— Thomas Huxley

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

— Blaise Pascal

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

— James Russell Lowell

“The faces of the panel listening were the very embodiment of skepticism made flesh.”

— Lorrie Moore

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

— E. M. Broner

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

— Denis Diderot

“Prayers, maybe most of them, go unanswered. You two, you’re too young, too fortunate, to know that. You will. Prayers go unanswered.…

— Edward J. Santella

The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large…

— C. L. R. James

Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. This was the sound conclusion of the Academic sceptics,…

— Desiderius Erasmus

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

— Carl Sagan

It's not so much what you have to learn if you accept weird theories, it's what you have to UNlearn.

— Isaac Asimov

“God is always trying to give blessings to us, but our minds are usually too full to receive them.”

— Shannon L. Alder

Asian parents, or a lot of parents in general, they have no idea what goes on in this industry. Mine were born…

— Manny Jacinto

These matters require what I think of as the Shakespearean cast of thought. That is to say, a fine credulity about everything,…

— Robertson Davies

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence…

— Walt Whitman

“...Today the lack of faith is an expression of profound confusion and despair. Once skepticism and rationalism were progressive forces for the…

— Erich Fromm

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…

— Michael Shermer

This a sacred rule we find Among the nicest of mankind, (Which never might exception brook From Hobbes even down to Bolingbroke,)…

— Charles Churchill

“I’m a lawyer. Pessimists see a glass half-empty; optimists see a glass half-full. Lawyers see a glass containing possible carcinogenic materials without…

— Naima Simone

I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine.…

— Thomas Paine

The question so often asked of modern painting, "What is it?", contains more than the dull skepticism of the man who is…

— Donald Barthelme

“[On scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss] [Carl Friedrich] Gauss told his friend Rudolf Wagner, a professor of biology at Gottingen University, that he…

— Gerhard Falk

But merely accepting authoritarian truth, even if that truth has some virtue, does not bring skepticism to an end. To blindly accept…

— Albert Schweitzer

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human…

— Carl Sagan

“I had hoped, as a broadcaster, to be merely ludicrous, but this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so…

— Kurt Vonnegut

I think the appropriate kind of skepticism is this: you've got to be asking questions all the time, you've also got to…

— Julian Baggini

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely…

— H.L. Mencken

The author brings to the table a healthy skepticism of the conventional wisdom, an admirable ability to separate fact from fancy, and…

— Alan Abelson

Skepticism cannot be revolutionary, even though it speaks the language of revolution.

— Raymond Aron

You cannot knock a man down who will not stand up, nor argue with a skeptic.

— Austin O'Malley

“The wonder was in her, and the skepticism was in the world, and the coolness was in both.”

— Philip Pullman

“Faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness.”

— Joe Klein

“. . . I don’t believe that celebrity spokeswomen get their hair colour from a box.”

— Roberta Pearce

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

— Carl Sagan

Never hold a belief longer than you can hold your breath.

— Marty Rubin

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

— Naguib Mahfouz