Quotes about Skepticism

Scepticism does not abolish the world, it turns it into questions.

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.

Deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything—new ideas and established wisdom.

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.

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

We might have thought that the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust were enough to innoculate us against the toxins there revealed and unleashed. But our resistance quickly fades. A new generation gladly abandons its critical and skeptical faculties.

through lowered educational standards, declining intellectual competence, diminished zest for substantive debate, and social sanctions against skepticism, our liberties can be slowly eroded and our rights subverted.

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.

Many pseudoscientific and New Age belief systems emerge out of dissatisfaction with conventional values and perspectives—and are therefore themselves a kind of skepticism.

He wants it both ways—the language and credibility of science, but without being bound by its method and rules.