Skepticism Quotes

I have found it an amusing strategy, when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.

~ Richard Dawkins

Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism.

~ Dan Barker

How could any Lord have made this world?... there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for this world to commit... No happiness lasted.

~ Virginia Woolf

After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke.

~ Russell Baker

If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.

~ Mark Twain

I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate.

~ Scarlett Thomas

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

~ C.s. Lewis

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced, but these are too humble to be convinced.

~ G.k. Chesterton

The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on - I am not too sure.

~ H.l. Mencken

Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.

~ Charles Dickens

Questions invaded my mind and I was young and skeptical, wanting to believe in the power of the mind, wanting to believe in the power of intellectual force, terribly afraid of sentimentality in myself and others.

~ Sherwood Anderson

That Muhammad could predict certain events does not prove that he was a prophet: he may have been able to guess successfully, but this does not mean that he had real knowledge of the future. And certainly the fact that he was able to recount events from the past does not prove that he was a prophet, because he could have read about those events in the Bible and, if he was illiterate, he could still have had the Bible read to him.

~ Muhammad Al Warraq

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.

~ Sam Harris

Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.

~ Immanuel Kant

Jesus' willingness to accommodate Thomas' unbelief is a reminder that God can handle our doubt. And that the rationalist doesn't need to see, touch, or run a lab test in order to believe in the resurrected Christ. Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me” (Jn 20:29) This is not a plea to accept what goes against reason, but it is an invitation to discover a faith that goes beyond it. The example of Thomas is for the stubborn skeptic in us all.

~ David D. Flowers

...Spinoza’s Conjecture:“Belief comes quickly and naturally, skepticism is slow and unnatural, and most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity.The scientific principle that a claim is untrue unless proven otherwise runs counter to our natural tendency to accept as true that which we can comprehend quickly. Thus it is that we should reward skepticism and disbelief, and champion those willing to change their mind in the teeth of new evidence. Instead, most social institutions-most notably those in religion, politics, and economics-reward belief in the doctrines of the faith or party or ideology, punish those who challenge the authority of the leaders, and discourage uncertainty and especially skepticism.

~ Michael Shermer

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.

~ Carl Sagan

To survive one tragedy was to learn you cannot survive them all, and this knowledge was both a freedom and a great loss.

~ Chris Womersley

After all, the girl actually had faith in something, which was more than most people had in these dark times. It was wrong to destroy it.

~ Chris Womersley

A story is a wondrous invention.

~ Chris Womersley

With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

He was the least spiritual of all the monks here, accepting nothing without proof. This skepticism was simultaneously his greatest asset and his greatest impediment.

~ Amy Thomson

We live our lives based on the assumption that we directly perceive, and are accurately interpreting, objects with a fair amount of accuracy. Since we naturally assume that we are apprehending objects of cognition as best as possible, it does not occur to us that we are purposely twisting the object before our eyes to fit our own convenience.

~ Tagawa Shun'ei

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others...

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing.

~ Richard Dawkins

Dean, you've been to Hell, I started the Apocalypse, and we're supposed to be possessed by an archangel and the devil. Now you're being skeptical?

~ Keith R.a. Decandido

We discover truth by asking rapier-like questions that cut through the thick fog of doctrinarism. Artists and philosophers must be subversive: we need these rebellious cynics to ask questions, they must resist cultural norms; seek out truths that are not self-evident and challenge everything. Doubt, not blind belief, is essential for discovering truth.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble.If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones.

~ Carl Sagan

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.

~ Carl Sagan

When we get to Heaven, we can try a monarchy, perhaps. John Hay

~ John Taliaferro

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

~ Patrick Ness

Although Dissociative Disorders have been observed from the beginnings of psychiatry, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R Dissociative Disorders (Steinberg 1985) was the first diagnostic instrument for the comprehensive evaluation of dissociative symptoms and to diagnose the presence of Dissociative Disorders.

~ Marlene Steinberg

Skepticism can keep us from blessing, can keep us trapped in two minds.

~ John Ortberg

Always doubtful is the one who always looks for certainty.

~ Raheel Farooq

INDECISION NOW!' isn’t a battle cry that’s going to rouse anybody’s blood. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t the sanest one.

~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

There is nothing worse than certainty. Doubt makes us weak. That is why it’s so important. I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to be powerful.

~ Phillip Andrew Bennett Low

Take it with a whole shaker of salt, a grain won't be close to enough.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.

~ Andreas Vesalius

[T]he longer you stay skeptical, doubtful, intellectually uncomfortable, the better it is for you.

~ Joseph Brodsky