Skeptical Quote Collection

Skeptical Quote of the Week

Quote	First name	Surname	SGU ep.
Your victim was smothered. That's not opinion. That's science and science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14-inch strap-on.	Vincent	Masuka	211
Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.	Isaac	Asimov	212
There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.	Carl	Sagan	213
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.	Galileo	Galilei	214
You look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralizing invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.	Rosalind	Franklin	215
Skeptics...pfft! They only believe in science.	Anonymous DragonCon Loser		216
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.	Christopher	Hitchens	217
When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra.	Theodore E	Woodward	219
When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.	David	Hume	220
The universe doesn't give a f*** about you. You're a speck in this shit.	Shit my dad says		221
Doubt, skepticism, innovation, and inquiry are the only means by which wonder, beauty, awe, and symmetry will be discovered.	Christopher	Hitchens	222
If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.	Marcus	Aurelius	223
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	224
I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.	Brian	Greene	225
No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar.	Donald	Foster	226
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.	Marie	Curie	228
Science makes a lousy religion and religion makes a lousy science.	Linda	Rosa	229
Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.	Galileo	Galilei	233
Weary the path that does not challenge. Doubt is an incentive to truth and patient inquiry leadeth the way.	Hosea	Ballou	235
One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.	Sir William	Osler	236
It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follow[s] from the advance of science.	Charles	Darwin	237
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.	Delos B	McKown	238
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.	Thomas	Paine	239
All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.	Mark	Twain	240
The only new ideas that are not subject to our skepticism or suspicion are our own.	Cullen	Hightower	241
Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.	Xi	Zhi	242
The best substitute for brains is silence.	Unknown		243
To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder.	Jane	Jacobs	244
My brain is the key that sets my mind free.	Harry	Houdini	245
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.	Jules Henri	Poincaré	246
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.	Arthur C	Clarke	247
Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.	Richard	Dawkins	248
Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is drowned in ignorance.	William	Channing	249
You don't use science to show you're right, you use science to become right.	Randall "xkcd"	Monroe	250
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.	Sir Peter B	Medawar	251
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.	George Bernard	Shaw	252
Imagination is as vital to any advance in science as learning and precision are essential for starting points.	Percival	Lowell	253
Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals - the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.	Martin	Gardner	254
Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.	Claudius	Ptolemy	255
Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.	Sir Humphrey	Davy	256
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.	Sir Winston	Churchill	257
...owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.	Christopher	Hitchens	258
Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.	Albert	Einstein	259
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.	Vannevar	Bush	260
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.	Bertrand	Russell	261
I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry. And that's extra scary to me, because there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run. He's fuzzy. Get outta here!	Mitch	Hedberg	262
The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.	John	Cleese	263
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.	anon		264
There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.	Hippocrates		265
You know that chemistry has an impact on your daily life, but the extent of that impact can be mind-boggling. Consider just the beginning of a typical day from a chemical point of view. Molecules align in the liquid crystal display of your clock, electrons flow through its circuitry to create a rousing sound, and you throw off a thermal insulator of manufactured polymer. You jump in the shower, to emulsify fatty substances on your skin and hair with chemically treated water and formulated detergents. You adorn yourself in an array of processed chemicals - pleasant-smelling pigmented materials suspended in cosmetic gels, dyed polymeric fibers, synthetic footware, and metal-alloyed jewelry. Today, breakfast is a bowl of nutrient-enriched, spoilage-retarded cereal and milk, a piece of fertilizer-grown, pesticide-treated fruit, and a cup of a hot, aqueous solution of neurally stimulating alkaloid. Ready to leave, you collect some books - processed cellulose and plastic, electrically printed with light-and-oxygen-resistant inks - hop in your hydrocarbon-fuelled metal-vinyl-ceramic vehicle, electrically ignite a synchronized series of controlled, gaseous explosions, and you're off to class!	Martin S	Silberberg	266
The correspondence between reality and my beliefs comes from reality controlling my beliefs, not the other way around.	Eliezer S	Yudkowsky	267
You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you're forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.	Fred	Brooks	268
It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would set aside all the intellectual progress of years, and plunge us back into the darkness of mediaeval disbelief.	H. P	Lovecraft	269
Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something about natural stupidity?	Steve	Polyak	270
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.	Albert	Einstein	271
I'm a Youth Worker with the Boys and Girls Club. Specifically I work with kids at an after school program. It was towards the end of the day and I was sitting with a small group of kids playing Apples to Apples. I forget what led up to it but a little boy says, "I believe in aliens." The little girl sitting next to me says, "Aliens haven't been proven yet. That's scientific!"	anon		272
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.	Marie	Curie	273
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.	Anatole	France	274
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.	Stephen Jay	Gould	275
All scientific work is incomplete - whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that is appears to demand at a given time. "Who knows", asked Robert Browning, "but the world may end tonight? True, but on available evidence most of us make ready to commute on the 8:30 the next day."	Sir Austin Bradford	Hill	276
The World is full of wonders, but they become more Wonderful, not less Wonderful when Science looks at them.	Sir David	Attenborough	277
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.	Carl	Sagan	278
We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.	Thomas	Paine	279
Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.	Bertrand	Russell	280
We work by exorcising incessant superstition that there are mysterious tribal gods against you. Nature has neither rewards nor punishments, only consequences. You can use science to make it work for you.	Edwin	Land	281
Everything alive will die someday. But in the meantime I got to see her smile, and that made it OK for awhile. To look into her eyes was worth the eventual demise of earth.	George	Hrab	282
My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.	J. B. S	Haldane	283
I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.	Stephen Jay	Gould	284
Questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations. It takes effort to rise above this tendency, to step back from our beliefs and our emotional connection to conclusions and focus on the process. The process (i.e science, logic, and intellectual rigor) has to be more important than the belief.	Steven	Novella	285
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.	P. C	Hodgell	286
Reality has been around since long before you showed up. Don't go calling it nasty names like 'bizarre' or 'incredible'. The universe was propagating complex amplitudes through configuration space for ten billion years before life ever emerged on Earth. Quantum physics is not 'weird'. You are weird.	Eliezer S	Yudkowsky	287
The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.	Dr. Martin Luther	King, Jr	288
Anecdotal evidence leads us to conclusions that we wish to be true, not conclusions that actually are true.	Barry	Beyerstein	289
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	290
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
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.	Sir 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
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