Quotes About Being Sceptical

#1. The Conservatives must realise that being sceptical is different from being phobic in what is an interdependent world.

John Bercow

#2. What about our human rights,' demanded Carl, who'd gathered a small deputation of kids within minutes. 'There is a WAR ON,' said Crewman Devlin, shortly. I wondered if this meant grown-ups actually listen to you when there wasn't a war on, because somehow I was sceptical.

Sophia McDougall

#3. I was inspired to write this book by those who are sceptical of the power of freedom to change the world.

Natan Sharansky

#4. No sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon.

G.K. Chesterton

#5. Doubt is easy when it is not a matter of survival: we are as sceptical as we can afford to be, and it is easiest to be sceptical about things that do not fundamentally sustain us. It is easy to doubt the existence of a table, it is hell to doubt the legitimacy of love.

Anonymous

#6. I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial of religion; we are made for it.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#7. Sceptical Ketman is widely disseminated throughout intellectual circles. One argues that humanity does not know how to handle its knowledge or how to resolve the problems of production and division of goods.

Czeslaw Milosz

#8. People should be highly sceptical of anyone's including their own, ability to predict the future, and instead pursue strategies that can survive whatever may occur.

Seth Klarman

#9. A sceptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. "Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know."

Arthur Helps

#10. Whoever may still be sceptical whether knowledge of animal behaviour can help our understanding of man can find no support from Freud.

John Bowlby

#11. We must be sceptical even of our scepticism.

Bertrand Russell

#12. All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance
and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not
to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is
supported by no appearance of probability.

David Hume

#13. When sceptical about reality, man tends to believe the absurd.

Raheel Farooq

#14. Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#15. When a business group tells us there is nothing wrong with the environment, naturally they may have good arguments, but we are also sceptical, because we know that they have an interest in these things.

Bjorn Lomborg

#16. There is a very important distinction between a critical attitude of mind (or critical faculty) and a sceptical attitude.

William Beveridge

#17. There is but one thing that can free a man from superstition, and that is belief. All history proves it. The most sceptical have ever been the most credulous.

George MacDonald

#18. Galton's eccentric, sceptical, observing, flashing, cavalry-leader type of mind led him eventually to become the founder of the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists, namely eugenics.

John Maynard Keynes

#19. Don't confuse scepticism as an attitude, or a method, with scepticism as a philosophy. Socrates was sceptical in temperament, and his method was to question everything. But he believed in absolute truth; he was no sceptic.

Peter Kreeft

#20. Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values; about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough.

C.S. Lewis

#21. All creatures on Earth have been hammered on the anvil of its gravity, for example, which influences size and morphology. So I am sceptical about finding armoured reptiles who can fly and spout flames.

Terry Pratchett

#22. Scotsmen are metaphisical and emotional, they are sceptical and mystical, they are romantic and ironic, they are cruel and tender, and full of mirth and despair.

William Dunbar

#23. I am also, I must confess, a little sceptical of the theory that we have a right, if we could, to pass on our capital burden to future generations. I remarked last year in this context that our predecessors had not passed any significant part of their burden on to us.

John James Cowperthwaite

#24. If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to three different accounts of the Crusades - one from the Muslim side, one from the Greek side and one from the Catholic side.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#25. I don't particularly enjoy watching films in 3D because I think that a well-shot and well-projected film has a very three-dimensional quality to it, so I'm somewhat sceptical of the technology.

Christopher Nolan

#26. It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything.

G.K. Chesterton

#27. Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#28. I want to spend the night alone in a haunted mansion. I wouldn't say I'm sceptical because that word implies the truth is out there when there is no truth out there.

Aidan Turner

#29. For agnosticism is, in a sense, what I am preaching. I do not wish to reduce the sceptical element in your minds. I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.

C.S. Lewis

#30. Be sceptical, ask questions, demand proof. Demand evidence. Don't take anything for granted. But here's the thing: When you get proof, you need to accept the proof. And we're not that good at doing that.

Michael Specter

#31. Expose every belief to the light of reason, discourse, facts, scientific observations; question everything, be sceptical because this is the only chance at life you will ever get.

James Randi

#32. For the point is this: not that myth refers us back to some original event which has been fancifully transcribed as it passed through collective memory; but that it refers us forward to something that will happen, that must happen. Myth will become reality, however sceptical we might be.

Julian Barnes

#33. So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egoist - and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so sceptical and selfish.

Bram Stoker

#34. At the beginning Scully was much more sceptical than she is now.

Gillian Anderson

#35. He was sceptical about the value of almost all work, save for the pleasure it gives the worker,' reported Virginia Woolf. 'He works only because he likes it.

Richard Davenport-Hines

#36. Most of us at the Reserve Bank come from a background in economics and hence have a predisposition in favour of free markets and a sceptical attitude towards intervention in those markets unless there is a clearly defined economic rationale for it.

Ian Macfarlane

#37. Naturalism is a methodological rather than a metaphysical view. It's because I am a naturalist, actually, that I am sceptical about physicalism.

Tim Crane

#38. I'm very sceptical about some of the excesses that I regard the Milibands of this world are leading towards. When you think about it, it's all been incredibly rapid - a year, a year and a half. And it's not a concern: it's an obsession. It's something very close to hysteria.

Frederick Forsyth

#39. I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites.

Philip Pullman

#40. Shouldn't children be taught critical, sceptical thinking from an early age? Shouldn't we all be taught to doubt, to weigh up plausibility, to demand evidence?

Richard Dawkins

#41. I accept that climate change is a challenge, I accept the broad theory about global warming. I am sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions.

John Howard

#42. I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

Gavin Bryars

#43. The rich are not born sceptical or cynical. They are made that way by events, circumstances.

J. Paul Getty

#44. It's against type in the sense of my background, but it's with type in the sense that I am a loner who's new to this business and sceptical about a lot of it.

Ben McKenzie

#45. I'm no longer sceptical. I no longer have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world.

David Attenborough

#46. We all trust each other to some extent. We have to rely on experts to some extent, but we should learn to be sceptical.

Lawrence M. Krauss