Skeptical Quotes - Page 13

• We should realize that, if [Socrates] demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was skeptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: how little do I know! Those who did not know this, he taught, knew nothing at all. This is the true scientific spirit.

  Karl Popper

  Mean, Men, Wisest Man

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• In a Photoshopped world, only the skeptical eye prevails.

  Jamais Cascio

  Eye, World

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• Americans are quite skeptical about the goal of promoting democracy. People feel it's a desirable goal, but, from a commonsense point of view, both Republicans and Democrats have come to the conclusion that democracy is something that countries can only come to on their own.

  Daniel Yankelovich

  Country, Views, People

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• You have to be very careful to view yourself with a somewhat skeptical eye and to remember that you're not here taking down everything I'm saying because you think I'm such a marvelous fellow but because your editors say go get 1,200 words or whatever on Chuck Heston.

  Charlton Heston

  Eye, Thinking, Views

  Interview with Bill Kauffman, reason.com. April 1, 1987.

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• I think one reason is that philosophers are more insecure to speak accessibly because non-philosophers are skeptical that philosophers have any special expertise. After all, all people - not just philosophers - have attitudes and points of view on various philosophical questions, and they rather resent being told that there are professionals who can think about these things better.

  Rebecca Goldstein

  Attitude, Philosophical, Insecure

  "Interview with Rebecca Goldstein on Plato at the Googleplex, philosophy for the public, and everything". Interview with Ophelia Benson, www.butterfliesandwheels.org. March 20, 2014.

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• There are many Americans who regardless of the intelligence or the profound political persuasion of a figure will never vote for a black man. Not all of them are racists; some are skeptical, and some are suspicious.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Men, Profound, Political

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I'm skeptical that the novel will be "re­invented." If you start thinking about a medical textbook or something, then, yes, I think that's ripe for reinvention. You can imagine animations of a beating heart. But I think the novel will thrive in its current form. That doesn't mean that there won't be new narrative inventions as well. But I don't think they'll displace the novel.

  Jeff Bezos

  Mean, Heart, Thinking

  "The Customer Is Always Right". Interview with Daniel Lyons, www.washingtonpost.com. December 21, 2009.

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• The dark ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This Dark Ages prison has no steel bars, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by misorientation and built of misinformation. Caught up in a plethora of conditioned reflexes and driven by the human ego, both warden and prisoner attempt meagerly to compete with God. All are intractably skeptical of what they do not understand. We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Dark, Thinking, Persistence

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• The fact of resurrection is not extraordinary; it is in accord with what we who believe at all believe to be the uniform law of life--that death does not touch it. The witnesses to the resurrection of Christ were unprejudiced, unexpectant, incredulous, and their honesty is not doubted even by skeptical criticism.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Easter, Honesty, Believe

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• People would be a lot more skeptical if they understood that there is an incredible amount of chance in the results that you observe for active managers. So the distribution of outcomes is enormously wide - but that's exactly what you'd expect by chance with lots of active managers who hold imperfectly diversified portfolios. The really good portfolios contain a lot of really lucky picks, and the really bad portfolios contain a lot of really unlucky picks as well as some really bad ones.

  Eugene Fama

  People, Would Be, Lucky

  "A Father of Modern Finance" by Rebecca Rolfes, www.chicagobooth.edu. 2013.

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• [Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mother, People, Intellectual

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• I've always been skeptical of people who say they lose themselves in a part. Someone once came up to Spencer Tracy and asked, "Aren't you tired of always playing Tracy?" Tracy replied, "What am I supposed to do, play Bogart?" You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it, not just develop a bag of tricks.

  LeBron James

  Tired, Play, Suits You

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• The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Truth, Men, Thinking

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• Don Juan tries not to see the skeptical winks that greet his boasting.

  Mason Cooley

  Trying, Juan, Boast

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• The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a skeptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Faith, Truth, Honesty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barbara L. Packer, Joseph Slater, Douglas Emory Wilson (2003). “The Conduct of Life”, p.107, Harvard University Press

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• Everybodys saying, be skeptical of Wikipedia. That is true. They should also be skeptical of everything. We should all be critical consumers of the media.

  Sue Gardner

  Media, Wikipedia, Should

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• Utility representatives will not show up at your door unannounced and will not ask for banking information in unsolicited phone calls. If you get a request for personal information that leaves you skeptical, contact my office and we can help determine if the call was legitimate.

  Mike Beebe

  Phones, Doors, Office

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• Maybe I was cast into a different role (in Montreal) and it seemed to follow me around wherever I went, ... Everyone is skeptical until you produce. It's up to me from this point forward. I'm going to get an opportunity to maybe take on a bigger role leadership-wise and offensively.

  Darcy Tucker

  Wise, Opportunity, Different

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• I'm having a hard time finding a date. I don't trust any women I meet. I'm very skeptical.

  Alex Rodriguez

  Hard Times, Don't Trust, Having A Hard Time

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• I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Women, Believe, Heart

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• 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 and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We're only one God away from total agreement.

  Michael Shermer

  Funny, God, Atheist

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• I would say that I'm 98 percent skeptical, but the other 2 percent [is] open for the possibility of things.

  Nicolas Cage

  Possibility, Percent

  "Nicolas Cage Is '2 Percent Open' to the Existence of Ghosts" by Matt Patches, www.esquire.com. September 25, 2015.

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• One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.

  Joseph Addison

  Lying, Pride, Son

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steel (1858). “The Spectator”, p.169

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• I readan article by a highly educated man wherein he told with what conscientious pains he had brought up all his children tobe skeptical of everything, never to believe anything in life or religion or their own feelings without submitting it to many rational doubts, to have a persistent, thoroughly skeptical, doubting attitude toward everything.... I think he might as well have taken them out in the backyard and killed them with an ax.

  Brenda Ueland

  Faith, Pain, Attitude

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• The great, the fundamental need of any nation, any race, is for heroism, devotion, sacrifice; and there cannot be heroism, devotion, or sacrifice in a primarily skeptical spirit.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Sacrifice, Race, Heroism

  Anna Julia Cooper, Charles C. Lemert, Esme Bhan (1998). “The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters”, p.193, Rowman & Littlefield

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