Skeptic Quotes
More Skeptic Quotes
Although he never admitted himself to be an atheist as such, he was clearly and unarguably the most vividly elegant and eloquent skeptic of them all. I'm referring, of course, to the great Scottish philosopher David Hume.
jonathan miller— Episode two: "Noughts and Crosses"
I am afraid that those comments go back to the late 80's. At that time I was a skeptic — the argument based on Koch's postulates to try to distinguish between cause and association. … Today I would regard the success of the many antiviral agents which lower the virus titers (to be expected) and also resolve the failure of the immune system (only expected if the virus is the cause of the failure) as a reasonable proof of the causation argument .
walter gilbert— Personal communication (4 April 2006) quoted in "Well, someone has to do it" at Moment of Science (July 2006)
By the time Verily was sixteen, a sturdy and rather good-looking young man of some education and impeccable manners, he had become a thoroughgoing skeptic. If the dogmas about witchery could be so hopelessly wrong, how could any of the teachings of the ministers be relied upon? It left Verily Cooper at loose ends, intellectually speaking, for all his teachers spoke as if religion were the cornerstone of all other learning, and yet all of Verily’s actual studies led him to the conclusion that sciences founded upon religion were uncertain at best, utterly bogus at worst.
orson scott card— Chapter 9 (Alvin Journeyman (1995))
" Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality," said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. "Here's one," said the Master. "When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach."
anthony de mello— p. 80 (One Minute Nonsense (1992))
Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 28 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
Everything good, fine or great they do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them.
friedrich nietzsche— Sec. 284. (Helen Zimmern translation)
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great : With too much knowledge for the skeptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride , He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest ; In doubt to deem himself a god , or beast ; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasn'ing but to err; Alike in ignorance , his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much.
— Alexander Pope, in An Essay on Man (1733) Epistle II
All skepticism is a kind of idealism . Hence when the skeptic Zeno pursued the study of skepticism by endeavoring existentially to keep himself unaffected by whatever happened, so that when once he had gone out of his way to avoid a mad dog, he shamefacedly admitted that even a skeptical philosopher is also sometimes a man, I find nothing ridiculous in this. There is no contradiction, and the comical always lies in a contradiction.
— Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846), p. 315, as translated by David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (1941)
Lovely was the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power, He on the thought-benighted skeptic beamed Manifest Godhead.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Religious Musings, line 29.
