Top 61 Science Skepticism Quotes
#1. A mode of thought does not become 'critical' simply by attributing that label to itself, but by virtue of its content.
Alan Sokal
#2. It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid - if we're talking not about an internal mindset, but about understanding of the external reality.
Carl Sagan
#3. As for Lindbergh, another eminent servant of science, all he proved by his gaudy flight across the Atlantic was that God takes care of those who have been so fortunate as to come into the world foolish. Expressing skepticism that adventure does not necessarily contribute to scientific knowledge.
H.L. Mencken
#4. There is no skepticism without science and the scientific method. It's about how we know what we know.
Steven Novella
#5. Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
Robert K. Merton
#6. Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know - the Church does neither.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#7. I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.
Ben Goldacre
#8. In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
David Hume
#9. People wrap themselves in their beliefs. And they do it in such a way that you can't set them free. Not even the truth will set them free.
Michael Specter
#10. What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#11. Skeptical scientists often point out, as Carl Sagan has, that the wonders of real science far surpass the supposed wonders of fringe science. I think it is possible to invert that idea, and to say that the wonders of real consciousness far surpass what conventional science admits can exist.
Michael Crichton
#12. When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there's something within me that's ready to believe in life after death. And it's not the least bit interested in whether there's any sober evidence for it.
Carl Sagan
#13. Where misunderstanding dwells, misuse will not be far behind. No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans - and misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas - than quantum mechanics.
Sean Carroll
#15. By skepticism ... we arrive first at suspension of judgment, and second at freedom from disturbance.
Sextus Empiricus
#17. I am not very skeptical ... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men, who ... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations which would have proven servicable.
Charles Darwin
#18. All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.
Thomas Paine
#19. He was the least spiritual of all the monks here, accepting nothing without proof. This skepticism was simultaneously his greatest asset and his greatest impediment.
Amy Thomson
#20. Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism
and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.
Stephen Jay Gould
#21. Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism and against dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition ... [and therefore] 'On to God!
Max Planck
#22. Science depends on organized skepticism, that is, on continual, methodical doubting. Few of us doubt our own conclusions, so science embraces its skeptical approach by rewarding those who doubt someone else's.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#23. [T]he downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large.
Massimo Pigliucci
#24. The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul
breaking the mental manacles
getting the brain out of bondage
giving courage to thought
filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#25. I definitely was attracted to similar things in punk and science. They both depend on a healthy dose of skepticism.
Greg Graffin
#26. Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.
Richard Feynman
#27. You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don't see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.
Carl Sagan
#28. The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.
Walter Gilbert
#29. 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
#30. It seems the more we know, the less we believe.
J.S.B. Morse
#31. Belief is the natural state of things. It is the default option. We just believe. We believe all sorts of things. Belief is natural; disbelief, skepticism, science, is not natural.
Michael Shermer
#32. Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.
David Suzuki
#33. The fact that Newton and Michael Faraday and other scientists of the past were deeply religious shows that religious skepticism is not a prejudice that governed science from the beginning, but a lesson that has been learned through centuries of experience in the study of nature.
Steven Weinberg
#34. Scientific knowledge advances haltingly and is stimulated by contention and doubt.
Claude Levi-Strauss
#35. Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe.
Thomas Clifford Allbutt
#37. All science ever did was measure a teensy sliver of the universe and assume that everything else behaved the same way.
Peter Watts
#38. For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very precisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping.
Peter Medawar
#39. The theologian Meric Casaubon argued - in his 1668 book, Of Credulity and Incredulity - that witches must exist because, after all, everyone believes in them. Anything that a large number of people believe must be true.
Carl Sagan
#40. It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.
Carl Sagan
#41. The implication was that if you had any skepticism whatsoever, you were anti-science. I think there's a difference between having skepticism about science and having skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry.
Marianne Williamson
#42. The whole idea of a democratic application of skepticism is that everyone should have the essential tools to effectively and constructively evaluate claims to knowledge.
Carl Sagan
#43. You know, the very strength of science is that it keeps us from the errors of mythos, from getting committed to a set of memes that we adopt because of congruence with what we think we know. Science demands skepticism.
Tim Ward
#44. The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination.
Charles Darwin
#45. Skepticism literally means a thoughtful inquiry, the looking at a problem in a disinterested spirit, the surveying of a question from many sides. In this sense it is the very essence of philosophy and science.
Joseph Alexander Leighton
#46. Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.
Jules Verne
#47. It Begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.
Steven Pinker
#48. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.
Carl Sagan
#49. If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.
Ann Druyan
#50. Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.
Michael Shermer
#51. I'd ask [God] why he keeps trying to kill us all with disease, pestilence, and natural disasters. I'd ask why 99% of all species there ever were are now extinct
if God works in mysterious ways, that way is mysteriously genocidal.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#53. There is a phrase used commonly in medicine: "true, true, and unrelated." It is meant to remind physicians not to confuse coincidence with cause. That kind of skepticism, while a fundamental tenet of scientific research, is less easily understood by laymen.
Michael Specter
#54. It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptance
betokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of skepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires.
Carl Sagan
#56. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.
Michael Crichton
#57. All science asks is to employ the same levels of skepticism we use in buying a used car or in judging the quality of analgesics or beer from their television commercials.
Carl Sagan
#58. How can anyone trust scientists? If new evidence comes along, they change their minds.
Terry Pratchett
#59. It would be better for us to have some doubts in an honest pursuit of truth, than it would be for us to be certain about something that was not true.
Daniel Wallace
#60. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
Paul Davies
#61. The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.
Carl Sagan
