#skeptic

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 Camus

#skepticism #suffering #death

She says he says, but she could be lying to me, and he could be lying to her, so I can’t believe her, even if I could believe her.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#believe #bizarre #funny #honest #honesty

But then it is easy, too easy, to sermonize about the dangers of paternalism and the need to take responsibility for our own lives, from the comfort of our couch in our safe and sanitary home. Aren't we, those who live in the rich world, the constant beneficiaries of a paternalism now so thoroughly embedded into the system that we hardly notice it? ↗

— Abhijit V. Banerjee

#poverty #skeptics #home

Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them. ↗

— Jules Verne

#science #skepticism #imagination

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#antitheism #atheism #new-atheism #skepticism #inspirational

scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill ↗

— George Eliot

#life

Though one believes in nothing, there are moments in life when one accepts the religion of the temple nearest at hand. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#belief #in-the-foxholes #skepticism #life

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

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 Sagan

#skepticism #truth #determination

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. ↗

— Robert K. Merton

#skepticism #faith