Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [41-60] of 121 Skepticism quotesSkepticism QuotesSkepticism Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes The tolerance of the skeptic… accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the “dogmatist.”~ Jean Guitton Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers.~ Bernhard Haisch All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.~ Judge Learned Hand A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however, socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends.~ Caryl Parker Haskins Love your country, but never trust its government.~ Robert A. Heinlein Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people!~ Patrick Henry A university’s essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism – a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.~ Richard Hofstadter To prevent inquiry is among the worst of evils.~ Thomas Holcroft To silence criticism is to silence freedom.~ Sidney Hook A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues…is on the way to totalitarianism and death.~ Robert M. Hutchins What are the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism is a sin.~ Thomas Henry Huxley Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.~ George Iles Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due.~ William Ralph Inge It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.~ Eugene Ionesco We are not final because we are infallible, but infallible only because we are final.~ Justice Robert H. Jackson If you believe everything you read, you better not read.~ Japanese Proverb I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.~ Thomas Jefferson We shall have our follies without doubt. Some one or more of them will always be afloat. But ours will be the follies of enthusiasm, not of bigotry, not of Jesuitism. Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.~ Thomas Jefferson ...truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.~ Thomas Jefferson Every good historian is almost by definition a revisionist. He looks at the accepted view of a particular historic episode or period with a very critical eye.~ Paul Bede Johnson Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print