Skeptical Quote Collection

Skeptical Quote of the Week

Quote	First name	Surname	SGU ep.
Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.	Sir Anthony	Hopkins	320
The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.	Leo	Tolstoy	291
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.	Ayn	Rand	292
Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.	Carl	Sagan	293
God give me the wisdom to see the truth however contrary to my established beliefs.	Robert	Quillen	294
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.	T. S	Elliot	294
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.	Ferdinand	Magellan	295
An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.	Andrew	Lang	296
Galileo was a man of science oppressed by the irrational and superstitious. Today, he is used by the irrational and the superstitious who say they are being oppressed by science. So 1984.	Marc	Crislip	297
There are two sources of error: Either you lack sufficient data, or you fail to take advantage of the data that you have	Bryan	Caplan	298
If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.	David	Brin	299
You can't believe everything you read on the internet.	Abraham	Lincoln	300
I think that it is much more likely, that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence, rather than the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence.	Richard	Feynman	301
Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically—without learning how, or without practicing… People with untrained minds should no more expect to think clearly and logically than people who have never learned and never practiced can expect to find themselves good carpenters, golfers, bridge-players, or pianists.	Alfred	Mander	302
I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.	Robert	Saplosky	303
Homeopathy is the idea that we just cured the world of terrorism by dumping Osama's corpse in the ocean.	Sean	Mcfly	304
I believed in reincarnation in my last life but I'm not to sure about it in this one.	Stephanie	Beach	304
I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.	Stephen	Hawking	305
The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.	Lewis	Thomas	306
It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.	Margaret	Fuller	307
Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.	Eric	Butterworth	308
In cases where prior knowledge is available, the alternative to 'an open mind' is not a 'closed mind'. It is 'an informed mind'. In such contexts, any appeal to 'keep an open mind' is an appeal to prefer ignorance over knowledge. This is not advisable.	Ian	Rowland	309
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If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another, and science will do for them all they wish and more than they can dream.	Winston	Churchill	311
If agricultural land be left uncultivated, in a few years the jungle returns, and signs are not lacking that a similar danger is always lying in wait for the fields of thought, which, by the labour of three hundred years, have been cleared and brought into cultivation by men of science. The destruction of a very small percentage of the population would suffice to annihilate scientific knowledge, and lead us back to almost universal belief in magic, witchcraft and astrology.	Sir William Cecil	Dampier	312
When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it.	Brian	Greene	313
Science is the best thing that humanity has ever come up with. And if it isn't, then science will fix it.	Bill	Nye	314
A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there’s no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?	Dr.	Manhattan	315
I have something to say. It's better to burn out than to fade away.	The Kurgan		316
And when we die our empty bodies turn to dust There'll be no pit of fire No angels singing songs for us There's nothing we can say that people won't forget some day There's nothing we can do that matters/And that's okay	From 'The Future' by The Limousines		317
Don't be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, and a treasure you can always carry easily.	cheap fortune cookie		318
Science is like a blabbermouth that ruins the end of a movie. Well I say there are things we don't want the answers to. Important things.	Ned	Flanders	319
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I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, blown and flared by passion’s storm, and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish and and naught remain.	Robert	Ingersoll	321
Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds... to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.	Ellison S.	Onizuka	323
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.	Galileo	Galilei	325
Imagination should give wings to our thoughts but we always need decisive experimental proof, and when the moment comes to draw conclusions and to interpret the gathered observations, imagination must be checked and documented by the factual results of the experiment.	Louis	Pasteur	326
How baffling it was that even the most cunning and clever people would frequently see only what they wanted to see, and would rarely look beyond the thinnest of facades. Or they would ignore reality, dismissing it as the facade. And then, when their whole world fell to pieces...they would tear their topknots or rend their clothes and bewail their karma, blaming gods or kami or luck or their lords or husbands or vassals--anything or anyone--but never themselves.	James	Clavell	327
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.	Michelangelo		327
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'	Isaac	Asimov	328
The advance of scientific knowledge does not seem to make either our universe or our inner life in it any less mysterious	J. B. S	Haldane	329
Questioner: As a scientist, would you deny the possibility of water having been changed into wine in the Bible? CS: Deny the possibility? Certainly not. I would not deny any such possibility. But I would, of course, not spend a moment on it unless there was some evidence for it.	Carl	Sagan	330
Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise.	Ivan	Pavlov	331
At every croasroads on the road that leads to the future, tradition has placed against us ten thousand men to guard the past.	Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard	Maeterlinck	332
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men (and women) of flesh and blood. (written by William Safire)	Richard	Nixon	333
The scientific method consists of the use of procedures designed to show not that our predictions and hypotheses are right, but that they might be wrong. Scientific reasoning is useful to anyone in any job because it makes us face the possibility, even the dire reality, that we were mistaken. It forces us to confront our self-justifications and put them on public display for others to puncture. At its core, therefore, science is a form of arrogance control.	Carol	Tavris	334
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance	Jean Paul	Sartre	335
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.	Christopher	Hitchens	336
To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen.	Thomas Henry	Huxley	337
Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.	David	Suzuki	338
Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.	Leonardo	daVinci	339
As I look back on nearly half a century of research, I am struck by the fact that my life in science has never proceeded along a straight line toward a goal, but in a series of steps in different and unexpected directions. It reminds me of the walks I loved to take in Paris- not journeys toward a particular goal, but random strolls that were directed, at each corner, by the curious or beautiful that appeared down one street or the other. I think it’s a good way to explore and a great way to live.	K. E	van Holde	340
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge	Isaac	Asimov	341
…if we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition – even when it seems to be doing a little good – we abet a general climate in which skepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. Figuring out a prudent balance takes wisdom.	Carl	Sagan	342
Feminism is best served by embracing reality, by thinking critically, and advancing rational arguments. This sloppy Newage shit-slurry of ingenuous gullibility is pure poison to the cause.	P. Z	Myers	343
It is a truly wonderful fact -- the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity -- that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to group.	Charles	Darwin	344
How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: ‘We do not understand because we cannot find the cause,’ we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.	Henri René Albert Guy	de Maupassant	346
You know the greatest danger facing us is ourselves, an irrational fear of the unknown. But there’s no such thing as the unknown– only things temporarily hidden, temporarily not understood.	James T	Kirk	347
Science is a way to teach how something gets to be known, what is not known, to what extent things are known (for nothing is known absolutely), how to handle doubt and uncertainty, what the rules of evidence are, how to think about things so that judgements can be made, how to distinguish truth from fraud, and from show.	Richard	Feynman	348
Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers.	Bernhard	Haisch	349
Fear believes, courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays. Courage stands erect and thanks. Fear is barbarism. Courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion. Courage is science	Robert	Ingersoll	350
If a man, holding a belief, which he was taught in childhood, or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men who call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it, the life of that man is one long sin against mankind	William K	Clifford	351
One sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything outside his experience as being impossible.	Farengar	Secret-Fire	352
Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.	Leo	Rosten	353
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynisism by those who have not got it.	George Bernard	Shaw	354