#skeptic

I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate. ↗

— Scarlett Thomas

#religion #scepticism #sceptics #skepticism #skeptics

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong. ↗

— William Osler

#truth #attitude

Scientists tend to be skeptical, but the weakness of the community of science is that it tends to move into preformed establishment modes that say this is the only way of doing science, the only valid view. ↗

— Walter Gilbert

#doing #establishment #into #modes #move

The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought. ↗

— Walter Gilbert

#science #skepticism #thought #virtues

Its attitude, which it has preached and practiced, is skepticism. Now, it finds, the public is applying that skepticism to the press. ↗

— Thomas Griffith

#attitude #finds #now #practiced #preached

Perhaps Europeans are a bit more skeptic whereas Americans are more believers. ↗

— Isabelle Huppert

#bit #europeans #more #perhaps #skeptic

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#marriage #moral-revolution #philosophy #politics #skepticism

Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#faith #skepticism #ufo #death

Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism. ↗

— Louis Pasteur

#skepticism #tainted #yourself

Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow. ↗

— Romain Rolland

#prepared #skepticism #tomorrow #way #yesterday