Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [1-20] of 121 Skepticism quotesSkepticism QuotesSkepticism Next 20 quotes The key to wisdom is this -- constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.~ Peter Abelard Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.~ John Adams Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.~ Aesop There are in fact four very significant stumblingblocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.~ Roger Bacon Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.~ Walter Bagehot Weary the path that does not challenge. Doubt is an incentive to truth and patient inquiry leadeth the way.~ Hosea Ballou So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television's a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business... We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion.~ Howard Beale Conformities are called for much more eagerly today than yesterday... skeptics, liberals, individuals with a taste for private life and their own inner standards of behavior, are objects of fear and derision and targets of persecution for either side... in the great ideological wars of our time.~ Isaiah Berlin A good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious. Suspicion marks the real difference between the man who wants to write honest history and the one who’d rather write a good story.~ Jim Bishop The concept of military necessity is seductively broad, and has a dangerous plasticity. Because they invariably have the visage of overriding importance, there is always a temptation to invoke security "necessities" to justify an encroachment upon civil liberties. For that reason, the military-security argument must be approached with a healthy skepticism.~ Justice William J. Brennan He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.~ Edmund Burke When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton 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 Keith Chesterton By doubting we all come at truth.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.~ Morris R. Cohen Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge Every politician, every member of the clerical profession, ought to incur the reasonable suspicion of being an interested supporter of false doctrines, who becomes angry at opposition, and endeavors to cast an odium on free inquiry. Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.~ Thomas Cooper The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.~ Clarence S. Darrow The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. The modern world is the child of doubt and inquiry, as the ancient world was the child of fear and faith.~ Clarence S. Darrow I see men ordinarily more eager to discover a reason for things than to find out whether things are so.~ Michel De Montaigne Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print