Scepticism Quotes - Page 3

• I've lost all capacity for disbelief. I'm not sure that I could even rise to a little gentle scepticism.

  Tom Stoppard

  Littles, Lost, Capacity

  Tom Stoppard (1991). “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead”, Grove/Atlantic

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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.

  James Russell Lowell

  Believe, Imagination, Sensual

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1162, Delphi Classics

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• The history of science alone can keep the physicist from the mad ambitions of dogmatism as well as the despair of pyrrhonian scepticism.

  Pierre Duhem

  Ambition, Mad, Despair

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• What of Art? -It is a malady. --Love? -An Illusion. --Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. --You are a sceptic. -Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. --What are you? -To define is to limit.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Limits, Belief

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• Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.

  Oscar Wilde

  Faith

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Essential Oscar Wilde”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

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• And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious.

  David Hume

  Strong, Pain, Philosophy

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.306

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• Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Real, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “An Outline of Philosophy”, p.2, Routledge

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• On New Year's Eve he ould make a resolution to recover some his previous scepticism, but until then he would do as the Romans do, and smile at people even if he disapproved of them

  Nick Hornby

  New Year, Years, People

  Nick Hornby (1999). “About a Boy”, p.140, Penguin

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• Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.

  Mason Cooley

  Back Roads, Credo

  "City Aphorisms: Fourth Selection". Book by Mason Cooley, 1987.

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• Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

  W.N.P. Barbellion

  Attitude, Thinking, Space

  W. N. P. Barbellion (1919). “The Journal of a Disappointed Man”

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• The scepticism which men affect towards their higher inspirations is often not an honest doubt, but a guilty negligence, and is a sign of narrow mind and defective wisdom.

  James Martineau

  Inspiration, Men, Doubt

  James Martineau (1905). “Tides of the Spirit: Selections from the Writings of James Martineau”

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• I find that the critics of voluntary service are all too often those who are prepared to accept such services when they require them but deride them with cynicism and scepticism when they see others helping and being helped.

  Eva Hart

  Helping, Volunteerism, Cynicism

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• And, as soon as possible, be on the lookout for someone whose whole manner of speaking and being makes, as it were, a "sound" that draws your mind and heart. And then, little by little, try to see if that person can be of real help on the way to genuine self-knowledge and insight about what God is and is not. In this realm, more than any other even, the paradoxical marriage of both openness and scepticism is essential.

  Jacob Needleman

  Real, Heart, Mind

  Source: www.watkinsmagazine.com

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• Scepticism and refusal of authority is at the heart of scientific endeavour. Scientific knowledge dictates economic possibilities

  David Landes

  Heart, Economics, Possibility

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• It is true that 'I seem to see a table' does not entail 'I see a table'; but 'I seem to feel a pain' does entail 'I feel a pain'. So scepticism loses its force - cannot open up its characteristic gap - with regard to that which ultimately most concerns us, pleasure and pain.

  Galen Strawson

  Pain, Suffering, Doe

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• A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Lying, Ocean, Now And Then

  Thomas Jefferson “Selected letters of Thomas Jefferson”, Lulu.com

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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.

  David Hume

  Men, Reflection, Imperfection

  David Hume, Peter Millican (2008). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.153, Oxford University Press

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• Never trust anyone who has no doubts. And I'm not talking about scepticism either: scepticism can be a healthy thing. You can have an argument with someone who's a sceptic. When I say 'cynic', I mean someone who has given up, and they want you to give up too, so it makes them feel better about themselves.

  Billy Bragg

  Giving Up, Mean, Feel Better

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Discourses on humility are a source of pride in the vain and of humility in the humble. So those on scepticism cause believers to affirm. Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, few doubtingly of scepticism.

  Blaise Pascal

  Humble, Humility, Pride

  Blaise Pascal (2016). “Pensées”, p.142, Open Road Media

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• Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Matter, Imperfect, Foolish

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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.

  David Hume

  Passion, Men, Being Positive

  David Hume (2016). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book”, p.213, VM eBooks

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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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Past, Class, People

  Aldous Huxley (1955). “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.

  William James

  Attitude, Details, Logic

  William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.75, 谷月社

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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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• The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.

  David Hume

  Principles, Employment, Occupation

  David Hume (2013). “Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects”, p.214, Broadview Press

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