#skeptic

Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely? ↗

— Laura Miller

#children #escapism #fantasy #reading #reality

A long time ago, I opened a book, and this is what I found inside: a whole new world. It isn't the world I live in, although sometimes it looks a lot like it. Sometimes, though, it feels closest to my world when it doesn't look like it at all. That world is enormous, yet it all fits inside an everyday object. I don't have to keep everything I find there, but what I choose to take with me is more precious than anything I own, and there is always more where that came from. The world I found was inside a book, and then that world turned out to be made of even more books, each of which led to yet another world. It goes on forever and ever. At nine I thought I must get to Narnia or die. It would be a long time before I understood that I was already there. ↗

— Laura Miller

#narnia #skepticism

You really want to go out to dinner?" Gabriel shot Rase a skeptical look out of the corner of his eye. "As opposed to what?" "Getting on your knees and begging me to beat you." There was no inflection in Gabriel's voice, no heat, and no emotion at all. He wasn't even looking at Rase. ... "I don't want one more than the other," he answered, fully aware that he was being challenged. "They're not interchangeable. I want them both." Rase took a breath to calm the pounding in his chest and continued, even though Gabriel wouldn't look at him. "I want to go out to dinner with you, anywhere you want, on a date. And then I want to go back to your place or my place and I want you to beat me until I bleed. ↗

— Anah Crow

#gay #sadomasochism #skepticism

Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the models. Beware of geeks bearing formulas. ↗

— Warren Buffett

#skepticism

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal... ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#athiesm #athiest #immortality #mortality #skepticism

Adventure,' then, is what might otherwise be called hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it, which is one thing that Lewis's child characters have learned from reading, 'the right books. ↗

— Laura Miller

#books #lit #reading #skepticism

Excuse me if I feel skeptical,' I said. 'Coach's foot fell off. How exactly do you propose to cure that? Superglue? ↗

— Carrie Harris

#zombies #skepticism

Skeptics always want miracles such as stepping down from the Cross, but never the greater miracle of forgiveness. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#jesus #miracles #skepticism #the-cross #forgiveness

A skeptical man with a credo, 'Seeing is believing'. One day he found something so alien and said, 'I can't believe what I just saw'. Then the other man with different credo, 'Blessed are they who believe without seeing'. One day he found something so alien and said, 'This is blasphemy, sinful and evil'. ↗

— Toba Beta

#believing #blasphemy #credo #evil #life

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie. ↗

— Thomas Paine

#religion #science #skepticism #age