Skepticism proverbs

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◆ I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!

- J.K. Rowling99

◆ Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

- Voltaire99

◆ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

- Carl Sagan99

◆ Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

- Carl Sagan99

◆ I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.

- Walt Whitman99

◆ Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.

- George Carlin99

◆ My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

- Bertrand Russell99

◆ She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.

- Jean-Paul Sartre99

◆ The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

- Christopher Hitchens99

◆ Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

- Albert Camus99

◆ The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

- Carl Sagan99

◆ I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

- Sam Harris99

◆ It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

- 99

◆ In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically

- Vincent Van Gogh98

◆ Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism

- David Suzuki98