Top 100 Skeptic Quotes
#1. The doctrine of foreordination is not a doctrine of repose; instead, it is a doctrine for second- and third-milers, and it will draw out of them the last full measure of devotion. It is a doctrine for the deep believer but it will bring only scorn from the skeptic.
Neal A. Maxwell
#3. The tolerance of the skeptic ... accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the "dogmatist."
Jean Guitton
#4. I appear as a skeptic, who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, all discovery and all innovation.
Christopher Hitchens
#5. When you cannot answer a skeptic, be content to wait for more light; but never forsake a great principle.
J.C. Ryle
#6. If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic.
Criss Jami
#7. The way we saw things, it didn't matter that God had created the heavens and the earth - he did not want us excited about living here. A good fundamentalist worth his weight in guilt was quick to remind any skeptic that the world was going to hell in a handbasket.
Matthew Paul Turner
#8. I'm certainly a skeptic. I always quibble with people.
George Carlin
#9. ...Job rails against God, not as a skeptic, not as a stranger to God's justice, but precisely as a believer. It is the very depth of Job's commitment to God's ethical vision that makes his rage so fierce, and that will finally compel an answer from God. (pg. 133)
Ellen F. Davis
#10. I would not call myself an optimist, even though I would aspire to be. I am innately a skeptic. There's kind of an incessant dissatisfaction that I have, that I'm always trying to either expose or fight against or wrestle with.
Carrie Brownstein
#11. The skeptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists.
Sextus Empiricus
#12. Too many are not willing to give the Gospel a fair trial. They are too ignorant to speak wisely but not wise enough to speak ignorantly. A man is not a sinner because he is a skeptic; he is a skeptic because he is a sinner.
Vance Havner
#13. I am a skeptic ... Global warming has become a new religion.
Ivar Giaever
#14. Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality," said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. "Here's one," said the Master. "When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.
Anthony De Mello
#15. "The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad.
Emile M. Cioran
#16. Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.
Richard Hofstadter
#17. The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.
George Bernard Shaw
#18. The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, & the things He has written in our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions - surer & more certain than sense & life itself.
Martin Luther
#19. Had this author [Sir W Drummond Academical Questions, chap. iii.], instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#20. You cannot knock a man down who will not stand up, nor argue with a skeptic.
Austin O'Malley
#21. Dear old al-Maarri was a great skeptic poet. He wrote a parody of the Koran, and his friends would tease him and say, "al-Maarri, but no one says your Koran." And he said, "Yes, but give me time. Give me time. If people recite it for twenty years it will become as popular as the other one."
Tariq Ali
#22. 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
#23. A skeptic as to all ideas, including especially my own, I have never suffered a pang when the ideas of some other imbecile prevailed.
H.L. Mencken
#24. The Skeptic's mistake lies in thinking that we should tie our hands behind our backs just because we will not be able to reach rock-hard conclusions.
Frederick Mosteller
#25. Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.
Vita Sackville-West
#26. A skeptic is a person who, when he sees the handwriting on the wall, claims it is a forgery.
Morris Bender
#27. My wish for you ... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#28. Among all these passionate hearts and all these undoubting minds there was one skeptic. How did he happen to be there? From juxtaposition. The name of this skeptic was Grantaire, and he usually signed with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything.
Victor Hugo
#29. Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing.
Michael Shermer
#30. All a skeptic is is someone who hasn't had an experience yet.
Jason Hawes
#31. Call me a skeptic, but I've always thought that it takes more than organic vegetables and talking circles to make an ideal society. Raven
Jennifer McMahon
#32. A good reporter remains a skeptic all his life.
Jack Smith
#33. Truth is absolute and for all time. But one man cannot envisage all of truth; the best he can do is see one aspect of it whole. That is why I say to you, be a skeptic, Hodge. Always be the skeptic.
Ward Moore
#34. The science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous ... Based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.
Gregg Easterbrook
#35. I'm a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.
Michael Shermer
#36. Now if the religious skeptic is right, we can know nothing about God. And if we can know nothing about God, how can we know God so well that we can know that he cannot be known? How can we know that God cannot and did not reveal himself - and perhaps even through human reason?
Peter Kreeft
#37. Michelle Obama has gone from political skeptic to political partner to a woman with a White House agenda of her own, and an approval rating higher than the president's.
Jodi Kantor
#38. A Christian is not a skeptic. A Christian is a person with a burning heart, a heart set aflame with certainty of the resurrection.
R.C. Sproul
#39. [On David Hume]
Although he never admitted to being an atheist as such, he was clearly and unquestionably the most vividly elegant skeptic of them all.
Jonathan Miller
#40. The requirement to obey and acknowledge God and Jesus Christ has caused the teachings of the Christian tradition to stray from morality to idol worship,
creating a world in which a murderer can be forgiven and sent to heaven, whereas a loving and caring skeptic would be cast into damnation.
David G. McAfee
#41. Spirituality can be severed from both vicious sectarianism and thoughtless banalities. Spirituality, I have come to see, is nothing less than the thoughtful love of life. [Spirituality for the Skeptic]
Robert C. Solomon
#42. It might be better to be more of a skeptic than a believer, less open-minded and more critical. The problem in the modern spiritual
Thomas Moore
#43. Once upon a time, I was a climate-change skeptic.
James Balog
#44. I'd rather be a hopeless romantic than a skeptic, because while the hopeless romantic may get burned many times, the skeptic will never really experience love.
Kealohilani
#45. I really don't have a lot of interest in national politics, and it's because I'm a skeptic. I think you can accomplish a lot more locally. I don't want to spin the wheels and not get anything done.
Ron Conway
#46. The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.
Paul Kurtz
#47. The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know the truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#48. But as a skeptic I am dubious about science as about everything else, unless the scientist is himself a skeptic, and few of them are. The stench of formaldehyde may be as potent as the whiff of incense in stimulating a naturally idolatrous understanding.
Robertson Davies
#49. The Holy Spirit is no skeptic. He has written neither doubt nor mere opinion into our hearts, but rather solid assurances, which are more sure and solid than all experience and even life itself.
Martin Luther
#50. Everyone - pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist - has to answer these questions: 'Where did I come from? What is life's meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die?' Those are the fulcrum points of our existence.
Ravi Zacharias
#51. I had always been a reader and a skeptic, so when I was old enough to break away from organized religion, it just came naturally.
Amber Heard
#52. Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.
Garrett Hardin
#53. Be skeptic, be doubtful, be rebellious towards every single dogma of the society. Only then there will be hope of progress for humanity.
Abhijit Naskar
#54. A skeptic, I would ask for consistency first of all.
Sylvia Plath
#55. I don't think it's spiritually economic to be a skeptic about absolutely everything.
Beth Nugent
#57. Skilled verse is the work of a profound skeptic.
Paul Valery
#58. I'm a big skeptic so I won't just go off what an individual may tell me. I gotta do the research. I'ma get different literature on that one subject and just compare and contrast. I do my own selective studies.
Kevin Gates
#59. Take all that you can of this book upon reason, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. (When a skeptic expressed surprise to see him reading a Bible)
Abraham Lincoln
#60. I am not an irretrievable skeptic. I am not hopelessly prejudiced. I am perfectly willing to believe, and my mind is wide open; but I have, as yet, to be convinced. I am perfectly willing, but the evidence must be sane and conclusive.
Harry Houdini
#61. Lovely was the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power, He on the thought-benighted Skeptic beamed Manifest Godhead.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#62. A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.
Warren W. Wiersbe
#63. At least five times, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist skeptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Christian Faith has to all appearance, gone to the dogs? But, in each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#64. Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.
Hosea Ballou
#65. Prayer is to the skeptic a delusion, a waste of time. To the believer it represents perhaps the most important use of time.
Philip Yancey
#66. I'm really a skeptic. I'm kind of not a believer in the paranormal.
Paul Feig
#67. There are moments of faith, interspersed with times when the smoke & flames of burning children blot out our faith ... although it flickers again. The difference between the skeptic & the believer is the frequency of faith and not the certitude of one's position.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#68. You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.
Donald Miller
#69. The skeptic may deny your doctrine or attack your church but he cannot honestly ignore the fact that your life has been changed.
Charles R. Swindoll
#71. Whether you consider yourself a believer or a skeptic, I invite you to seek the same kind of honesty and to grow in an understanding of the nature of your own doubts. The result will exceed anything you can imagine.
Timothy Keller
#72. Do you know what the world will be saved by? I'll tell you. It'll be saved by the human spirit. And by the human spirit, I don't mean anything divine, I don't mean anything supernatural - certainly not coming from this skeptic.
Sherwin B. Nuland
#73. I go to church because I am a skeptic in regard to my own skepticism.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
#74. I am an infidel today. I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no.
Luther Burbank
#75. I would say that Barack Obama has always been a real optimist about what can be accomplished. He believes that government can be used to create systemic, long-term, real change. And the first lady is more of a skeptic.
Jodi Kantor
#76. Our politics, economics, advertising, and religions (New Age and Old) are awash in credulity. Those who have something to sell, those who wish to influence public opinion, those in power, a skeptic might suggest, have a vested interest in discouraging skepticism,
Carl Sagan
#77. Satan, our adversary, wants us to fail. He spreads lies as part of his effort to destroy our belief. He slyly suggests that the doubter, the skeptic, the cynic is sophisticated and intelligent, while those who have faith in God and His miracles are naive, blind, or brainwashed.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
#78. The true skeptic is skeptical even about skepticism.
Marty Rubin
#79. I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.
George Carlin
#80. I'm a skeptic of religious systems, not of the faith. Someday I will be happy to discuss the difference with you.
Ted Dekker
#81. The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history.
Ron Chernow
#83. Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands. For example, every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.
George Bernard Shaw
#84. Death is a confirmation of the believer's creed. For the skeptic it is discovery, immense and late.
Calvin Miller
#85. I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose.
Robert Breault
#86. None other than the Skeptic's Dictionary points out an obvious and troubling irony: "When spoken by schizophrenics, glossolalia is recognized as gibberish. In charismatic Christian communities glossolalia is sacred and referred to as 'speaking in tongues' or having 'the gift of tongues.
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#87. Denying the existence of God leads us to preposterous conclusions so that, in the end, the amoral world of the skeptic who simply cannot explain good is worse than the world of the theist who has an explanation for evil.
Ravi Zacharias
#88. Here the skeptic finds chaos and the believer further evidence that the hand that made us is divine.
Robert Moses
#89. Scientists are skeptics. It's unfortunate that the word 'skeptic' has taken on other connotations in the culture involving nihilism and cynicism. Really, in its pure and original meaning, it's just thoughtful inquiry.
Michael Shermer
#90. It is assumed that the skeptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of skepticism.
G.K. Chesterton
#91. The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.
Miguel De Unamuno
#92. I see myself as a climate change skeptic and a skeptic looks at the evidence and bases conclusions on the evidence rather than on belief. To hold the view that this is not an issue that you need to do something about, to hold the view that it's all a furphy takes belief.
Ross Garnaut
#93. You can feed a skeptic the party line but you can't make him swallow it.
Marty Rubin
#94. I now believe truth lies not in logic but in hope, both past and future. I believe hope can surprise you. It can survive the odds against it, all sorts of contradictions, and certainly any skeptic's rationale of relying on proof through fact.
Amy Tan
#95. Opponents of climate change reform got their wish. "Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has, because that's all you really want," Morano later acknowledged. "There's no legislation we're championing. We're the negative force. We are just trying to stop stuff.
Jane Mayer
#96. It seems to me that the civilized human being is a skeptic someone who believes nothing at face value.
Robert McKee
#97. Skeptic that I was as an adolescent, I had recently come to believe in a Supreme Being after thumbing through a Victoria's Secret catalogue.
Woody Allen
#98. When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#99. I don't really believe in the paranormal; I'm a skeptic through and through.
Connor Jessup
#100. Perhaps Europeans are a bit more skeptic whereas Americans are more believers.
Isabelle Huppert
