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Scepticism Quotes

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Scepticism Quotes

“The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation.”

InspirationTruthEarthScienceReligionContradictionWrongSkepticismBeliefsIdeaRevelationReligionsScepticismHypotheses
Book:Contact
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“[Charles] Nodier’s later view was that fantasy reconciles men to their fate. Fantasy and the taste for chimeras, he wrote, are symptoms of a time of political decay and transition, when the unpleasant realities of political life are too hard to bear. They serve a useful purpose in that they give men hope when scepticism and disillusion would otherwise drive them to despair.”

FantasyDespairIllusionScepticismChimera
Book:Murdered Magicians
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“The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science 'more geometrico.”

MindMatterTruthScienceBeliefSpacePowerInspireSimplicityIntellectAstronomyThoughtCertaintySkepticismMathematicianPhysicistMiddle AgesGeometryDespotismAntiquityScepticismGreeksAncient GreeksInstitute For Advanced Study
Author:Hermann Weyl
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“I [the sceptic] resolve not to believe my senses. I break my nose against a post that comes in my way; I step into a dirty kennel: and after twenty such wise and rational actions, I am taken up and clapped into a mad-house. Now, I confess I would rather make one of those credulous fools whom Nature imposes upon, than one of those wise and rational philosphers who resolve to withold assent at all this expense. If a man pretends to be a sceptic with regard to the information of sense, and yet prudently keep's out of harms way as other men do, he must excuse my suspicion that he either acts as a hypocrite, or imposes on himself.”

Common SenseScepticism
Book:An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense: A Critical Edition
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“And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”

ReasonScienceReligionFaithBeliefPrinciplesAtheismScepticism
Book:God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
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“When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof of such a claim is wanting. Within our times the Christian religion is surely an antiquity jutting out from a far-distant olden time; and the fact that people believe such a claim...is perhaps the oldest part of this heritage. A god who conceives children with a mortal woman; a wise man who calls us to work no more; to judge no more; but to heed the signs of the imminent apocalypse; a justice that accepts the innocent man as a proxy sacrifice; someone who has his disciplines drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of the afterlife, to which death is the gate; the figure of the cross as a symbol, in a time that no longer knows the purpose and shame of the cross - how horribly all this wafts over us, as from the grave of the ancient past! Are we to believe that such things are still believed?”

ReligionBeliefChristChristianityAtheismReligionsScepticismAntitheism
Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“The terrible error in the course of human civilization is undoubtedly the defective judgment that allowed religious authorities usurp the foundation of societal morality, in which all collective ethics of humankind must take a cause. This appalling blunder is comparable only to assigning the leper exclusive franchise to run beauty clinics in the society; this can only lead to cycles upon cycles of common infection syndrome.”

ReligionAtheismFreethoughtScepticismEthics And Moral PhilosophyNew Book
Book:Echoes of Common Sense
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“Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the things they dislike (notably religion) and refusing to apply their skepticism to the things they do like (notably Darwinism). On two occasions I’ve urged Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, to put me on its editorial board as the resident skeptic of Darwinism. Though Shermer and I know each other and are quite friendly, he never got back to me about joining his editorial board.”

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Author:William A. Dembski
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“In Hume, Rationalism and scepticism existed peacefully side by side. Scepticism was for the study only, and was to be forgotten in the business of practical life. Moreover, practical life was to be governed, as far as possible, by those very methods of science which his scepticism impugned. Such a compromise was only possible for a man who was in equal parts a philosopher and a man of the world; there is also a flavour of aristocratic Toryism in the reservation of an esoteric unbelief for the initiated. The world at large refused to accept Hume’s doctrines in their entirety. His followers rejected his scepticism, while his German opponents emphasized it as the inevitable outcome of a merely scientific and rational outlook. Thus as the result of his teaching British philosophy became superficial, while German philosophy became anti-rational—in each case from fear of an unbearable Agnosticism. European thought has never recovered its previous whole-heartedness; among all the successors of Hume, sanity has meant superficiality, and profundity has meant some degree of madness. In the most recent discussions of the philosophy appropriate to quantum physics, the old debates raised by Hume are still proceeding.”

PhilosophyScepticismDavid Hume1935Anti RationalismThe Ancestry Of Fascism
Book:The Will to Doubt
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“The business of scepticism is to be dangerous. Scepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of sceptical thought, they will probably not restrict their scepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials and 35,000-year-old channellees. Maybe they’ll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they’ll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?”

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Book:The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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“Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, 'Hold on a moment.' You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours.”

WorldBookRealReasonPlayMomentsAbleThreeWishGrowsEnvironmentPiecesTvsShapesHundredIncrediblesSeedsArguingColourDimensionsThank GodBeatenTornOrchestraSymphonyClawsScepticismKnowledge And PowerThree DimensionsSymphony Orchestras
Author:Ray Bradbury
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“As its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.”

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Author:John Brunner
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“The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.”

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Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.”

Has BeensRealityFoundResultsBehindsFieldsTheoryNegativeCriticismAppearanceConceptionExhaustedSpeculationScepticismPositive Results
Book:Synthetic Philosophy ...: First principles. 1920. [v.2-3] The principles of biology. v.1, rev. & enl. ed., 1921
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“No conclusions can be more agreeable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity.”

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Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature
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“Scepticism commonly takes up the room left by defect of imagination, and is the very quality of mind most likely to seek for sensual proof of supersensual things. If one came from the dead it could not believe; and yet it longs for such a witness, and will put up with a very dubious one.”

IfsMindBelieveLeftImaginationRoomsQualityProofWitnessSensualSkepticismDefectsDubiousScepticism
Book:Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
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“Nothing can be more unphilosophical than to be positive or dogmatical on any subject; and even if excessive scepticism could be maintained it would not be more destructive to all just reasoning and inquiry. When men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.”

IfsMenPassionGivenSubjectsSecureSuspenseReasoningDestructiveArrogantAbsurdityMistakenInquiryBeing PositiveReinsDeliberationDogmatismScepticism
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book
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“What's the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the upper classes were thoroughly sceptical, despairing, negative. Why? Among other reasons, because they were the only people who could afford to eat too much meat. Now there's cheap Canterbury lamb and Argentine chilled beef. Even the poor can afford to poison themselves into complete scepticism and despair.”

PeopleReasonPastPoorChristianityEnemyClassToo MuchMembersDespairNegativeMeatPoisonSkepticismFrozenLambsBeefUpper ClassScepticismChilledCanterbury
Book:The collected works of Aldous Huxley
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“General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.”

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Book:The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding
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“It has often been argued that absolute scepticism is self-contradictory; but this is a mistake: and even if it were not so, it would be no argument against the absolute sceptic, inasmuch as he does not admit that no contradictory propositions are true. Indeed, it would be impossible to move such a man, for his scepticism consists in considering every argument and never deciding upon its validity; he would, therefore, act in this way in reference to the arguments brought against him.”

IfsMenWayDoeSelfWould BeMovingMistakeImpossibleArgumentAbsolutesSkepticismConsideringPropositionsContradictoryValidityScepticismSceptic
Book:The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)
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“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.”

MenHumansMayReasonSeemsCertainBeliefHoursOpinionImpossibleHumourHe ManReflectionIntenseContradictionImperfectionSkepticismPersevereRenounceScepticismHuman Reason
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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“There is, indeed a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are corrected by common sense and reflection.”

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Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature
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“Scepticism is an ability, or mental attitude, which opposes appearances to judgments in any way whatsoever, with the result that,owing to the equipollence of the objects and reasons thus opposed we are brought firstly to a state of mental suspense and next to a state of "unperturbedness" or quietude.”

WayStatesReasonNextAbilityResultsAttitudeObjectsJudgmentAppearanceSuspenseSkepticismMental AttitudeOwingScepticism
Book:Sextus Empiricus
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“The human understanding is a revelation from its maker, which can never be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity or infidelity here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove this celestical communication. This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, that is, nature's God, that two and two are equal to four.”

HumansMadeTwoCertainThreeUnderstandingFourDesignCommunicationProveEqualMiracleMade ItRevelationsMakersProphecyInfidelityDoubtedFounding Fathers ChristianFulfilmentFounding Fathers ReligionFounding Fathers ReligiousFounding Fathers Anti ReligionChristianity From Founding FathersScepticismIncredulity
Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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