Skeptics Quotes

“But then it is easy, too easy, to sermonize about the dangers of paternalism and the need to take responsibility for our own lives, from the comfort of our couch in our safe and sanitary home. Aren't we, those who live in the rich world, the constant beneficiaries of a paternalism now so thoroughly embedded into the system that we hardly notice it?”
― Abhijit V. Banerjee, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

“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.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“I'm a Skeptic. And I'm a Journalist. I look up things in the library—a lot! I believe in the motto of Missouri, the 'Show-me, don't just blow me' state. I need evidence. I need demonstrations. I need show-and-tell. Even though I pray to God every once in a while, especially when I'm in trouble—which for most guys my age is every 28 days—I still think deeply about the issues and don't automatically jump to a religious or mystical answer to questions. I am, by nature, doubtful about the existence of God, and even whether He is a He or a Her. I don't believe in New Age stuff. For me, 'Past Life Regression' means not calling a girl after she gives me her phone number. Sure I own a lucky rabbit's foot, a lucky penny, a lucky 4-leaf clover and a lucky horeshoe [sic], and a pair of lucky underwear and several pairs of lucky socks that I only wash every seven days. But under it all I am a died–in-the-wool skeptic.”
― Earl Lee, Raptured: The Final Daze of the Late, Great Planet Earth

“Be thankful for the people who have stood by you and cheered you on, but don't forget to be thankful for the ones that said it could not be done. Writing a book is no small task and even the skeptics can help you get where you want to be!”
― CK Webb, Suspense Magazine, January 2011

“Indeed, to this day, I think if you blame everything on the government, you're not just wrong, you're being reckless. It's as silly as blaming everything on the Freemasons, or the Illuminati, or insert-bad-guy-here. But I do believe that someone must ask the hard questions, especially of our elected officials as well as powerful men who become members of so-called secret societies. Remember: Governments don't lie. People lie. And if you want the real story, you need to find out more about those people.”
― Brad Meltzer, History Decoded: The 10 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

“A person who peremptorily denies the existence of anything which is beyond the horizon of his understanding because he cannot make it harmonise with his accepted opinions is as credulous as he who believes everything without any discrimination. Either of these persons is not a freethinker, but a slave to the opinions which he has accepted from others, or which he may have formed in the course of his education, and by his special experiences in his (naturally limited) intercourse with the world. If such persons meet with any extraordinary fact that is beyond their own experience, they often either regard it with awe and wonder, and are ready to accept any wild and improbable theory that may be offered to them in regard to such facts, or they sometimes reject the testimony of credible witnesses, and frequently even that of their own senses. They often do not hesitate to impute the basest motives and the most silly puerilities to honourable persons, and are credulous enough to believe that serious and wise people had taken the trouble to play upon them “practical jokes,” and they are often willing to admit the most absurd theories rather than to use their own common sense.”
― Franz Hartmann, Life and Doctrines of Paracelsus

“Invariably, I will be referred to Gleason Archer's massive Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, a heavy volume that seeks to provide the reader with sound explanations for every conceivable puzzle found within the Bible - from whether God approved of Rahab's lie, to where Cain got his wife. (Note to well-meaning apologists: it's not always the best idea to present a skeptic with a five-hundred-page book listing hundreds of apparent contradictions in Scripture when the skeptic didn't even know that half of them existed before you recommended it.)”
― Rachel Held Evans, Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions

“I always got a bit pissed off with those broadsheet sceptics who make their living being passionately angry about homeopathy, God, synchronicity or whatever, because it's as if they can't get past their emotions, and in their rage they become as faith-driven as the beliefs they criticise. I always said they give scientists a bad name. After all, science has to be about asking unthinkable questions, not closing down debate.”
― Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic Universe

“There is no excuse for anyone to misunderstand God's Word if he will, like a child, accept the Bible for what it says, and be honest enough to consecrate himself to obey it. He must accept the Bible as God's Word. He must believe that God could not be honest if He sought to hide from man the very things He will judge him by in the end. He must accept the Bible as the final Court of Appeal on its own subjects, and forget man's interpretations and distortion of the Word. He must believe that God knows what He is talking about; that He knows how to express Himself in human language; that He said what He meant, and meant what He said; and that what He says on a subject is more important than what any man may say about it.”
― Finis Jennings Dake, God's Plan for Man: Contained in Fifty-Two Lessons, One for Each Week of the Year

“In her book claiming that allegations of ritualistic abuse are mostly confabulations, La Fontaine’s (1998) comparison of social workers to ‘nazis’ shows the depth of feeling evident amongst many sceptics. However, this raises an important question: Why did academics and journalists feel so strongly about allegations of ritualistic abuse, to the point of pervasively misrepresenting the available evidence and treating women disclosing ritualistic abuse, and those workers who support them, with barely concealed contempt? It is of course true that there are fringe practitioners in the field of organised abuse, just as there are fringe practitioners in many other health-related fields. However, the contrast between the measured tone of the majority of therapists and social workers writing on ritualistic abuse, and the over-blown sensationalism of their critics, could not be starker. Indeed, Scott (2001) notes with irony that the writings of those who claimed that ‘satanic ritual abuse’ is a ‘moral panic’ had many of the features of a moral panic: scapegoating therapists, social workers and sexual abuse victims whilst warning of an impending social catastrophe brought on by an epidemic of false allegations of sexual abuse. It is perhaps unsurprising that social movements for people accused of sexual abuse would engage in such hyperbole, but why did this rhetoric find so many champions in academia and the media?”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

“It's been very interesting over the years just how many of those psychiatrists that were openly incredulous and dismissive have become stalwart admitants to the [trauma and dissociation] unit. In fact I can remember one psychiatrist... this is going back more than a decade and a half... it says something about the ambivalence about this area... who rang me saying he doesn't believe that DID exists but nevertheless he's got a patient with it that he'd like to refer. That's called Psychiatrist Multiple Reality Disorder.
- 15 years as the director of a trauma and dissociation unit: Perspectives on Trauma-informed Care”
― Warwick Middleton

“Pride, willfulness, and rebellion against what “is written” are the causes of the Bible being hard to understand. The hard part, then, is not understanding with the mind, but being willing to obey what he does not want to obey. If a person could not understand the truth, he could not reject it.”
― Finis Jennings Dake

“Skeptics would rather, even at their own expense, appear to be right than take the risk of trusting.”
― John Ortberg, Faith and Doubt

“Skepticism can keep us from blessing, can keep us trapped in two minds.”
― John Ortberg, Faith and Doubt

“The only valid faith today is disbelief.”
― J.S.B. Morse, Now and at the Hour of Our Death

“That's what drives science though: trying to find out the way things are, the way they were, and the way it really works. If that is your goal, then you want to make sure that your information is accurate, and if it's not, then it doesn't matter how much you liked that old urban legend or fictional factoid you once bought into. You will discard it, and be embarrassed by it, seeking instead for truth.”
― Aron Ra

“When you become a transformer, you become faced with the challenge of skepticism”
― Sunday Adelaja

“For other men --- men who are part of something, who follow a chief they believe in, or ways they were reared in from birth --- they can keep their eyes from seeing what they have not been taught to see, and do not want to see. But too late was I brought to my father’s house. I tried to be part of it, but I never could.”
― Evangeline Walton, The Cross and the Sword

“These aren't just culturally determined stories we tell each other. Science is a method, and ideas have to work in order to survive. But we occasionally encounter postmodernist arguments that essentially try to dismiss the hard-won conclusions of science. I guess if you're losing a fight over evidence and logic, it's easy to just sweep the board off the table and say none of it matters.”
― Dr. Steven Novella

“Sceptics have often pointed out that no archaeological evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ has been discovered. And they are correct.”
― John D. Morris

“I've had the same version from patients in a slightly different take, which is the patient looking at me with fixed eyes saying "I'm not multiple but I think some of the others are", or alternatively, fixedly, "we're not multiple". So whatever it is about multiple realities it affects us all.
- 15 years as the director of a trauma and dissociation unit: Perspectives on Trauma-informed Care”
― Warwick Middleton

“Searching for truth without skepticism, is like having sex without a genital.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Illusion of Religion: A Treatise on Religious Fundamentalism

“Forget mindfulness. You just have to be a gorgeous lazy slacker.”
― Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

“The world does not need more believers, it needs more skeptics!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“We invite skepticism. In fact, we require it. It is an essential mechanism for challenging ideas, identifying errors, and furthering collective knowledge.”
― Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying