Skeptic Quotes

So if you hear something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in issues is merely to point out how badly we're doing, not to suggest a way we might do better.
Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they ought to be. And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem.
My motto: Fuck Hope.
P.S. In case you're wondering, personally I'm a joyful individual, I had a long happy marriage and a close and loving family, my career has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and it continues to expand. I'm a personal optimist, but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger, is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism–the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.
And P.P.S., by the way, if by some chance you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still don't wish to be included. ~ George Carlin

"The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad. ~ Emile M. Cioran

We discover truth by asking rapier-like questions that cut through the thick fog of doctrinarism. Artists and philosophers must be subversive: we need these rebellious cynics to ask questions, they must resist cultural norms; seek out truths that are not self-evident and challenge everything. Doubt, not blind belief, is essential for discovering truth. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one skeptic. How did he happen to be there? From juxtaposition. The name of this skeptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. ~ Victor Hugo

There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far. ~ George Santayana

The way we saw things, it didn't matter that God had created the heavens and the earth - he did not want us excited about living here. A good fundamentalist worth his weight in guilt was quick to remind any skeptic that the world was going to hell in a handbasket. ~ Matthew Paul Turner

Anytime you do something out of the ordinary, there will be skeptics. Everyone wants a reason why. That's fine. What's happened with me is just an accumulation of a lot of things. ~ Brian Roberts

You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it. ~ Carl Sagan

He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul. ~ Aldous Huxley

If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic. ~ Ann Druyan

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt. ~ Vita Sackville-West

We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man. ~ Sam Harris

Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry. ~ Michael Shermer

Tim Keller's ministry in New York City is leading a generation of seekers and skeptics toward belief in God. I thank God for him. ~ Billy Graham

The skeptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists. ~ Sextus Empiricus

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse. ~ Blaise Pascal

The science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous ... Based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert. ~ Gregg Easterbrook

If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic. ~ Criss Jami

The sceptics, like bees, give their one sting and die. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'm a Skeptic. And I'm a Journalist. I look up things in the library - a lot! I believe in the motto of Missouri, the 'Show-me, don't just blow me' state. I need evidence. I need demonstrations. I need show-and-tell. Even though I pray to God every once in a while, especially when I'm in trouble - which for most guys my age is every 28 days - I still think deeply about the issues and don't automatically jump to a religious or mystical answer to questions. I am, by nature, doubtful about the existence of God, and even whether He is a He or a Her. I don't believe in New Age stuff. For me, 'Past Life Regression' means not calling a girl after she gives me her phone number. Sure I own a lucky rabbit's foot, a lucky penny, a lucky 4-leaf clover and a lucky horeshoe [sic], and a pair of lucky underwear and several pairs of lucky socks that I only wash every seven days. But under it all I am a died–in-the-wool skeptic. ~ Earl Lee

Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. ~ John Dewey

The proving power of the intellect or the senses was questioned by the skeptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics. ~ Imre Lakatos

Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time. ~ Philip Yancey

There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown-paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin was a skeptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver "with blue stones" in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and came back for his umbrella. ~ G.K. Chesterton

And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerity I heard in their voices, I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won. ~ Barack Obama

[...] intellectualism (as understood by Fascists) divocers thought from action, science from life, the brain from the heart, and theory from practice. It is the posture of the talker and the skeptic, of the person who entrenches himself behind the maxim that it is one thing to say something and another thing to do it; it is the utopian who is the fabricator of systems that will never face concrete reality; it is the talk of the poet, the scientist, the philosopher, who confine themselves to fantasy and to speculation and are ill-disposed to look around themselves and see the earth on which they tread and on which are to be found those fundamental human interests that feed their very fantasy and intelligence. ~ Giovanni Gentile

Enthusiasm makes life more vibrant, more alive, more fulfilling. Enthusiasm makes you more effective, more fun to be around, more persuasive, more open to the best possibilities, and more energetic. Enthusiasm makes the difference between an outstanding career and a mediocre one. It adds great quantities of positive energy to everything it touches.

Enthusiasm can win over even the most ardent skeptic. When you truly believe in what you are doing, it shows. And it pays. The winners in life are those who are excited about where they're going. Sincere and persistent enthusiasm can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. ~ The Monthly Motivator

The True Believer ignores anything that doesn't fit his belief system. Instead, he inevitably comes to hold those beliefs at a very profound level. They can become absolutely part of his identity. It is this that brings together the religious, the psychic, the cynic (as opposed to the open skeptic) and the narrow-minded of all kinds. It is something I encountered a lot among my fellow Christians. At one level it can be seen in the circular discussion which goes as follows:

Why do you believe in the bible?
Because it is Gods word.
And why do you believe in God?
Because of what it says in the bible.

At a less obvious level, it can be seen in the following common exchange:

Why do you believe Christianity is true?
Because I have the experience of a personal relationship with God.
So how do you know you're not fooling yourself?
Because i know it is real.

Even as an enthusiastic believer myself I could see this kind of tautology at work, and over time I realized that it is common to all forms of True Belief., regardless of the particular belief in question. The fact is, it's enormously difficult - and you need to be fantastically brave - to overcome the circularity of your own ideologies. But just because our identity might be tied up with what we believe, it doesn't make that belief any more correct. One wishes that True Believers of any sort would learn a little modesty in their convictions. ~ Derren Brown

I'd rather be a hopeless romantic than a skeptic, because while the hopeless romantic may get burned many times, the skeptic will never really experience love. ~ Kealohilani

I'm a skeptic of religious systems, not of the faith. Someday I will be happy to discuss the difference with you. ~ Ted Dekker

It might be better to be more of a skeptic than a believer, less open-minded and more critical. The problem in the modern spiritual ~ Thomas Moore

After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke. ~ Russell Baker

Atheism ... goes back to the Ancient Greek (a - a negative prefix, theos - god), evidencing the antiquity of the outlook of those who saw no presence of God (or gods) in their everyday lives, or who even denied the very existence of God (or gods). There are different types of atheism, but atheism in one form or another has existed in every civilization.

[T]he concept "atheist" partially coincides with such notions as "skeptic," "agnostic," and "rationalist" and it borders with such notions as "anticlerical," "God fighter" (theomachist), and "God abuser" (blasphemer).

It is wrong to identify an atheist as one who denies God, though this is what opponents of atheism usually claim. If such people exist, it would probably be more correct to call them the "verbal" murderers of God, for the prefix a- means denying as elimination. ... I would like to stress that the prefix a- does not necessarily mean rejection. It can mean "absence of." For example, "apathy" means "absence of passion." Thus, the concept "atheist" does not necessarily mean nihilism. ~ Valerii A. Kuvakin

Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible) ~ Abraham Lincoln

For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith. ~ Criss Jami

I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

I am an infidel today. I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no. ~ Luther Burbank

It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything. ~ G.K. Chesterton

David Hume, the great­est skep­tic of them all, once remarked that after a gath­er­ing of skep­tics met to pro­claim the verac­i­ty of skep­ti­cism as a phi­los­o­phy, all of the mem­bers of the gath­er­ing nonethe­less left by the door rather than the win­dow. I see Hume's point. It was all just talk. The solemn philoso­phers weren't tak­ing what they said seri­ous­ly. ~ Philip K. Dick

If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820] ~ Thomas Jefferson

Regardless of how you came to doubt, doubt itself is not the problem, but what can be problematic and even tragic is what you do with your doubt. ~ Ben Young

I would not call myself an optimist, even though I would aspire to be. I am innately a skeptic. There's kind of an incessant dissatisfaction that I have, that I'm always trying to either expose or fight against or wrestle with. ~ Carrie Brownstein

I have got, over the years, a sense of the immense sweep of creation, of the evolutionary process in everything, of how incomprehensible God must necessarily be to be the God of heaven and earth. You can't fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories…. What kept me a skeptic [of secularism] in college was precisely my Christian faith. It always said: wait, don't bite on this, get a wider picture, continue to read. If you want your faith, you have to work for it…. Even in the life of a Christian, faith rises and falls like the tides of an invisible sea. It's there, even when he can't see it or feel it, if he wants it to be there. You realize, I think, that it is more valuable, more mysterious, altogether more immense than anything you can learn or decide in college. Learn what you can, but cultivate Christian skepticism. ~ Flannery O'Connor

The true skeptic is skeptical even about skepticism. ~ Marty Rubin

Do you…love me?" I asked him, my chest
hurting.
"That's a silly question," he said, stroking my cheek. "An unnecessary question. I've never made a secret of my feelings, Bianca. I know you're a skeptic, but you must have realized that I fell for you right away. ~ R.K. Lilley

Shaw is absolutely correct in stating that for Nietzsche, the modern state in a secularized world can no longer claim the normative authority that religion once afforded it, and consequently its political authority is undermined. Nevertheless, the passage in question should not lead us to conclude that Nietzsche is a political skeptic in the sense that he cannot see how we can 'reconcile our need for normative authority with our need for political authority.' Simply put, Nietzsche does believe these two authorities can be married again, but that this will happen outside the modern state structure, which, as I have emphasized above, is in decline as well as in the process of being replaced by more 'innovative' and better-suited institutions.
Shaw downplays this latter point, writing that 'although Nietzsche speculates, in passing, about what a world without states would be like, he accepts that political agency in the modern world is concentrated in them,' noting that 'in Human, All Too Human he speculates that in the absence of religion the state as a form of political organization might die out. He warns against any rash political experiments that would hasten this process.' Yet the decay of the state is not something that Nietzsche speculates about in passing; it is the essential point of the aphorism. With the rise of modern democracy, the state will inevitably decay. If Nietzsche recommends that we put our faith in the 'prudence and self-interest of men' to 'preserve ~ Hugo Drochon

Liberty has produced scepticism, and scepticism has destroyed liberty. The lovers of liberty thought they were leaving it unlimited, when they were only leaving it undefined. They thought they were only leaving it undefined, when they were really leaving it undefended. ~ Gilbert K. 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 K. Chesterton

When will we see that the depravity of the human heart is not most clearly on display in the gay pride parade or at the abortion clinic? The greatest failures in human experience are not seen in the activist atheist rallying unbelief or the scorning skeptic ridiculing Jesus Christ, or the senseless wars, or baffling famines. The greatest failure in human existence is the failure of Christ-followers to love one another earnestly from a pure heart ~ James MacDonald

But promoting philosophical skepticism is not quite the mission of this book. If awareness of the Black Swan problem can lead us into withdrawal and extreme skepticism, I take here the exact opposite direction. I am interested in deeds and true empiricism. So, this book was not written by a Sufi mystic, or even by a skeptic in the ancient or medieval sense, or even (we will see) in a philosophical sense, but by a practitioner whose principal aim is not to be a sucker in things that matter, period. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? ~ Douglas Adams

It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Your sweet spot is in between the true believers and the scoffing skeptics ... ~ Rob Brezsny

Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Too many are not willing to give the Gospel a fair trial. They are too ignorant to speak wisely but not wise enough to speak ignorantly. A man is not a sinner because he is a skeptic; he is a skeptic because he is a sinner. ~ Vance Havner

If God can do anything, then He surely can even allow evil and call it good. Why does He have to explain it? Surely, if omnipotence means all-powerful without even logical or rational limitation, He can allow evil to exist and not see any incoherence in it. And if God can do anything He pleases why can't He simply be incoherent as well? That may be irrational to the skeptic, but does not limitless power also mean the power to be irrational without justification? ~ Ravi Zacharias

If skeptic can weakly force E, then he can force E. ~ Glenn Shafer

They rode for days through the rain and they rode through rain and hail and rain again. In that gray storm light they crossed a flooded plain with the footed shapes of the horses reflected in the water among clouds and mountains and the riders slumped forward and rightly skeptic of the shimmering cities on the distant shore of that sea whereon they trod miraculous. They climbed up through rolling grasslands where small birds shied away chittering down the wind and a buzzard labored up from among bones with wings that went whoop whoop whoop like a child's toy swung on a string and in the long red sunset the sheets of water on the plain below them lay like tidepools of primal blood. ~ Cormac McCarthy

When you cannot answer a skeptic, be content to wait for more light; but never forsake a great principle. ~ J.C. Ryle

It is not enough for the skeptic, then, to simply dismiss the Christian teaching about the resurrection of Jesus by saying, "It just couldn't have happened." He or she must face and answer all these historical questions: Why did Christianity emerge so rapidly, with such power? No other band of messianic followers in that era concluded their leader was raised from the dead - why did this group do so? No group of Jews ever worshipped a human being as God. What led them to do it? Jews did not believe in divine men or individual resurrections. What changed their worldview virtually overnight? How do you account for the hundreds of eyewitnesses to the resurrection who lived on for decades and publicly maintained their testimony, eventually giving their lives for their belief? ~ Timothy Keller

I had always been a reader and a skeptic, so when I was old enough to break away from organized religion, it just came naturally. ~ Amber Heard

You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand. ~ Criss Jami

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. ~ Bertrand Russell

What I have described as the liberal position shares with conservatism a distrust of reason to the extent that the liberal is very much aware that we do not know all the answers and that he is not sure that the answers he has are certainly the rights ones or even that we can find all the answers. He also does not disdain to seek assistance from whatever non-rational institutions or habits have proved their worth. The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face this ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic - but it seems to require a certain degree of diffidence to let others seek their happiness in their own fashion and to adhere consistently to that tolerance which is an essential characteristic of liberalism. ~ Friedrich A. Hayek

[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Denying the existence of God leads us to preposterous conclusions so that, in the end, the amoral world of the skeptic who simply cannot explain good is worse than the world of the theist who has an explanation for evil. ~ Ravi Zacharias

I'm a big skeptic so I won't just go off what an individual may tell me. I gotta do the research. I'ma get different literature on that one subject and just compare and contrast. I do my own selective studies. ~ Kevin Gates

Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic. ~ Hosea Ballou

I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath. ~ Rene Descartes

I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right. ~ George Carlin

Frankly, the whole concept was a little too New Age - y for me. ~ Kristen Roupenian

Opponents of climate change reform got their wish. "Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has, because that's all you really want," Morano later acknowledged. "There's no legislation we're championing. We're the negative force. We are just trying to stop stuff. ~ Jane Mayer

Cynicism and skepticism are the crudest form of quasi-intellectualism ... Let the cynic become cynical of his cynicism and the skeptic skeptical of his skepticism and join the battle. ~ R.C. Sproul

I see myself as a climate change skeptic and a skeptic looks at the evidence and bases conclusions on the evidence rather than on belief. To hold the view that this is not an issue that you need to do something about, to hold the view that it's all a furphy takes belief. ~ Ross Garnaut

When confronted by a 'believer' it is easy for me to contrast the views of the skeptic with those of the rationalist. I simply reach into my pocket and pull out my change.

Holding a quarter aloft, I say, 'This is a most remarkable coin, for it is heavier than all the sins of humanity committed since the beginning of the human race.'

I then hold up a nickel and say, 'This coin is even more amazing, as it is brighter and shinier than the flames that proceeded from the Burning Bush discovered on Mt. Sinai by Moses.'

Then I raise a penny and state, 'This portrait of President Lincoln is more realistic and true-to-life than any portrait of Satan ever painted.'

And finally, I hold out a bright, shiny dime and say, 'And this dime is the most amazing of all because it is heavier and contains more precious metals than all the gold bricks in the streets of Heaven.'

I end with 'Give to Caesar what is his, and hold the rest of it dear - for it is all you see and touch - and the Christian god can take care of all his things, for they amount to less than this 41 cents I hold here in my hand. ~ E. Haldeman-Julius

Had this author [Sir W Drummond Academical Questions, chap. iii.], instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Skepticism? Yes, but a saint is a skeptic once in twenty-four hours. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

The Bible has, amazingly- no doubt with supernatural grace-survived its critics. The harder tyrants try to eliminate it and skeptics dismiss it, the better read it becomes. ~ Charles Colson

But as a skeptic I am dubious about science as about everything else, unless the scientist is himself a skeptic, and few of them are. The stench of formaldehyde may be as potent as the whiff of incense in stimulating a naturally idolatrous understanding. ~ Robertson Davies

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. ~ Matt Taibbi

A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed. ~ H.L. Mencken

It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. ~ Timothy Keller

I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast? ~ Douglas Hofstadter

Skeptic that I was as an adolescent, I had recently come to believe in a Supreme Being after thumbing through a Victoria's Secret catalogue. ~ Woody Allen

So let's set the record straight. Faith is not the opposite of reason. The opposite of faith is unbelief. And reason is not the opposite of faith. The opposite of reason is irrationality. Do some Christians have irrational faith? Sure. Do some skeptics have unreasonable unbelief? You bet. It works both ways. ~ Greg Koukl

On Turgenev: He knew from Lavrov that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky's studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazarov. I frankly replied, 'Bazaraov is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as mush as you did your other heroes.'

'On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,' Turgenev replied, with an unexpected vigor. 'When we get home I will show you my diary, in which I have noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazarov's death.'

Turgenev certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazarov. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazarov's point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. 'Analysis first of all, and then egotism, and therefore no faith,--an egotist cannot even believe in himself:' so he characterized Hamlet. 'Therefore he is a skeptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber's plate for the magic helmet of Mambrino (who of us has never made the same mistake?), is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the s ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

Actually I'm pretty adamant about, you know, the whole God thing and it seems that skeptics are by and large atheists or something approaching that, which I strongly identify with. So it turned out to be a good thing and I have become enthusiastically part of it. ~ Jamie Hyneman

Among so many conflicting ideas and so many different perspectives, the honest man is confused and distressed and the skeptic becomes wicked ... Since one must take sides, one might as well choose the side that is victorious, the side which devastates, loots, and burns. Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than to be eaten. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Whether you consider yourself a believer or a skeptic, I invite you to seek the same kind of honesty and to grow in an understanding of the nature of your own doubts. The result will exceed anything you can imagine. ~ Timothy Keller

...Job rails against God, not as a skeptic, not as a stranger to God's justice, but precisely as a believer. It is the very depth of Job's commitment to God's ethical vision that makes his rage so fierce, and that will finally compel an answer from God. (pg. 133) ~ Ellen F. Davis

I write poems. I'm often laughed at for doing so. My friends and foes, who were born in 1980's or even later aren't savvy with this concept of the reading and writing poems. They're probably not at fault because while they were being brought up in their respective environments, they weren't really taught how to appreciate poetry. Sadly, those same indifferent souls are now raising their children in the same robotic way, keeping them away from an art form as pure as poetry. Anyway, on the path my life, my poems, written and unwritten, are spread throughout like breadcrumbs. Alas! I'm savouring these breadcrumbs alone because no one has chosen to walk by me, maybe because they're skeptic about the taste of these crumbs. They've hypothetically assumed that these crumbs, these poems are bitter. Sigh! They aren't courageous enough to gather the strength to actually taste them. Perhaps this way, the real sweetness of my crumbs, of my poems stays obscured to them. But I haven't let them crush this sweetness beneath their feet and that's why, I've chosen to walk alone instead. How can I not savour these crumbs if I already know that they're leading me to the apex of my life? How can I not write poems if a voice inside me is constantly pecking my hands to give it a form? This voice is my meditation. This voice is my shadow, a shadow which is stubborn enough to remain intact even when I'll be gone. This voice is my concrete, the concrete that I'm made up of. This voice is my power, the ~ Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal

There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic. ~ Margaret Oliphant

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it. ~ George Bernard Shaw

When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, there arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. He finds both wrong by being in extremes. He labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance. ~ Marsilio Ficino

Jesus' willingness to accommodate Thomas' unbelief is a reminder that God can handle our doubt. And that the rationalist doesn't need to see, touch, or run a lab test in order to believe in the resurrected Christ. Jesus told him, "You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me" (Jn 20:29) This is not a plea to accept what goes against reason, but it is an invitation to discover a faith that goes beyond it. The example of Thomas is for the stubborn skeptic in us all. ~ David D. Flowers

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