#skeptical

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

The parents have a right to say that no teacher paid by their money shall rob their children of faith in God and send them back to their homes skeptical, or infidels, or agnostics, or atheists. ↗

— William Jennings Bryan

#atheists #back #children #faith #god

I intend to leave after my death a large fund for the promotion of the peace idea, but I am skeptical as to its results. ↗

— Alfred Nobel

#am #death #fund #i #i am

It was important to me to find a label that wouldn't back out after a first single. Everyone's so used to hearing me with Hootie, they're going to be skeptical. ↗

— Darius Rucker

#back #everyone #find #first #going

Because a truly skeptical position would be a very uncertain one. ↗

— Rupert Sheldrake

#position #skeptical #truly #uncertain #very

I was a terrible believer in things,but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn't know where to put my faith,or if there was such a place,or even what the word faith meant, in all of it's complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake. ↗

— Cheryl Strayed

#faith #nonbelievers #skeptical #faith

...I believe there is a legitimate aim of transcendence that is more modest and perhaps more realistic. We may not be able to rule out the skeptical possibility, and we may not be able to ground our normal capacity for understanding on something in which we can have even greater confidence; but it may still be possible to show how we can reasonably retain our natural confidence in the exercise of understanding, in spite of the apparent contingencies of our nature and formation. The hope is not to discover a foundation that makes our knowledge unassailably secure but to find a way of understanding ourselves that is not radically self-undermining, and that does not require us to deny the obvious. The aim would be to offer a plausible picture of how we fit into the world. Even in this more modest enterprise both theism and naturalistic reductionism fall short. Theism does not offer a sufficiently substantial explanation of our capacities, and naturalism does not offer a sufficiently reassuring one. ↗

— Thomas Nagel

#radically-self-undermining #skeptical #nature

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#extremism #opinion #opinions #passion #rationalism

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society? ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#life #more #moreover #mystery #paris

There are those who believe we have need of more literature, of a large international publishing house, of a great peace newspaper, or the like. I am rather skeptical about this idea. ↗

— Fredrik Bajer

#am #believe #great #house #i