Sceptic Quotes - Page 2

• I accept sceptics, you've got to have challenges.

  Dan Aykroyd

  Challenges, Accepting

  "Soul survivor". Interview with Emine Saner, www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2007.

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• In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

  Carl Sagan

  Kindness, Fear, Real

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.298, Ballantine Books

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• Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mistake, People, Dogma

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.547, Psychology Press

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• The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of any one, who feeling inhimself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm'd with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them.

  David Hume

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  David Hume (2012). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.221, Courier Corporation

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• I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything especially as I am now so much occupied with theology but I don't see my way to your conclusion.

  Thomas Huxley

  Too Much, Way, Possibility

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Leonard Huxley (1900). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”

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• 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

  Past, Names, Giving

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• Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.

  Eric Ambler

  Law, Use, Facts

  Eric Ambler (1992). “A Coffin for Dimitrios/Judgement on Deltchev/Passage of Arms: Three Complete Novels in One Volume”, Galahad Books

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• I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic.

  Michael Hanlon

  Lying, Views, Years

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• In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Faith, Fall, Believe

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• I come from a generation of sceptics, who do not believe what politicians say. The Labour Party wants to convince people through actions, not words. The Nationalist party have given the country 25 years of lies, the Labour Party will build the country anew.

  Joseph Muscat

  Country, Lying, Party

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• The sceptics, a kind of nomads, despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from time to time all civil society. Fortunately their number was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though without any fixed plan or agreement.

  Immanuel Kant

  Agreement, Land, Numbers

  Immanuel Kant (1915). “Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of Its First Publication”

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• The sceptics assert, though absurdly, that the origin of all religious worship was derived from the utility of inanimate objects,as the sun and moon, to the support and well-being of mankind.

  David Hume

  Religious, Moon, Support

  David Hume (2013). “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• [The sceptic] must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles to prevail.All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.

  David Hume

  Men, Principles, Action

  David Hume (1788). “An inquiry concerning human understanding. A dissertation on the passions. An inquiry concerning the principles of morals. The natural history of religion”, p.162

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• The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the Poetry of an epoch.

  Thomas Huxley

  Philosophy, Men, Infidelity

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.66, University of Georgia Press

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• Sceptics are generally ready to believe anything, provided it is sufficiently improbable.

  Karl Ludwig von Knebel

  Believe, Skepticism, Ready

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• The sceptic only stumbles at matter of fact.

  Karl Ludwig von Knebel

  Matter, Facts, Skepticism

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• Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot.

  E. A. Bucchianeri

  True Love, Falling In Love, Real

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• The last thing I'll say for the people that don't believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry you can't dream big and I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles.

  Lance Armstrong

  Dream, Sorry, Believe

  "The World According to Lance" Transcript, www.abc.net.au. October 15, 2012.

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• I used to be sceptic, but not anymore, because now I am positive that I'm getting screwed.

  Dennis Miller

  Used, Used To Be

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I note that warmists are often banging on about the fact that sceptics like Christopher Booker and myself 'only' have arts degrees. But actually that's our strength, not our weakness. Our intellectual training qualifies us better than any scientist - social or natural sciences - for us to understand that this is, au fond, not a scientific debate but a cultural and rhetorical one.

  James Delingpole

  Art, Training, Intellectual

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• I am not a global warming sceptic. I accept that rising human-caused CO2 from fossil sources could 'change the climate'. The basic physics is there to support this view. But where is the evidence that the putative change would be large or damaging?

  Chris de Freitas

  Views, Support, Fossils

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• When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Atheist, Vedas, Gita

  Sri Aurobindo (2016). “Karmayogin”, p.14, editionNEXT.com

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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.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Mistake, Moving, Men

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathan Houser, Christian J.W. J. W. Kloesel (1992). “The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)”, p.56, Indiana University Press

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• There may be rhetoric about the socially constructed nature of Western science, but wherever it matters, there is no alternative. There are no specifically Hindu or Taoist designs for mobile phones, faxes or televisions. There are no satellites based on feminist alternatives to quantum theory. Even that great public sceptic about the value of science, Prince Charles, never flies a helicopter burning homeopathically diluted petrol, that is, water with only a memory of benzine molecules, maintained by a schedule derived from reading tea leaves, and navigated by a crystal ball.

  Simon Blackburn

  Memories, Reading, Tea Leaves

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• Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Wine, Afterlife, Order

  Evelyn Waugh (1942). “Put out more flags”

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