#skeptic

It all depends on what people you're talking about helping. That's the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet - they're all so incredibly selfish. ↗

— Derek Landy

#cynicism #helping-others #perspective #religion #selfishness

The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader. ↗

— Nikki Giovanni

#authority #classes #i #overcomes #reader

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#skepticism #intelligence

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#humility #skepticism #men

I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do. ↗

— Billy Connolly

#atheism #belief #christianity #god #religion

Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #skepticism #change

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 Sagan

#humility #science #skepticism #truth #science

The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#skepticism #science

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

— Voltaire

#atheism #atrocities #barbarity #injustice #religion

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. Rowling

#hermione-granger #knowledge #logic #reason #skepticism