Skeptic Quotes & Sayings

I don't really believe in the paranormal; I'm a skeptic through and through. — Connor Jessup

And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerity I heard in their voices, I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won. — Barack Obama

I count myself a a rationalist and a skeptic with a very conscious awareness of my indebtedness to Western Christian civilization, and I am a fairly passionate defender of it. — John Rhys-Davies

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

I'm a skeptic ... Global Warming it's become a new religion. You're not supposed to be against Global Warming. You have basically no choice. And I tell you how many scientists support that. But the number of scientists is not important. The only thing that's important is if the scientists are correct; that's the important part. — Ivar Giaever

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

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

Every person who has mastered a profession is a skeptic concerning it. — George Bernard Shaw

My wish for you ... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A teasing smirk flitted across his face, as he completed his thought, "I'll try not to take it too hard if I fail miserably, because you can be the world's greatest skeptic ... "
"Nah ... " I coughed out a little chuckle, "not when you're involved. I'm your number one fan ... You couldn't shake me if you tried." I gave him a playful wink, adding musingly, "Though I might stop short of hanging out in the bushes with binoculars ... "
"Well, then," he grinned, "clearly you're not my number one fan. — M.A. George

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

[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]
This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327). — Thomas Jefferson

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

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

Skepsis. I am a true skeptic, born under the noble sign of skepsis, the sign of the man who knows that all astrology is absolutely and without reservation the bullest of bullsh*t that ever there was. It is a senseless delusion that does not even have the benefit of being harmless fun. It is a harmful bore. Harmful to the human spirit, harmful to the dignity and wonder of the real universe and the real power of the mind to think for itself. I hate astrology with a fervor that is almost frightening. - Stephen Fry (when asked what sign he would be if he could create his own zodiac) — Stephen Fry

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

The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, there arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. He finds both wrong by being in extremes. He labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance. — Marsilio Ficino

The shamanic realm is to get you out of the word set. For skeptics, that's impossible, and they just can't see that and it just makes no sense. — Fred Alan Wolf

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

[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

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

I'm a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. — Michael Shermer

We want to be open-minded enough to accept radial new ideas when they occasionally come along, but we don't want to be so open-minded that our brains fall out. — Michael Shermer

Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic. — Richard Hofstadter

I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything. — Thomas Henry Huxley

If God can do anything, then He surely can even allow evil and call it good. Why does He have to explain it? Surely, if omnipotence means all-powerful without even logical or rational limitation, He can allow evil to exist and not see any incoherence in it. And if God can do anything He pleases why can't He simply be incoherent as well? That may be irrational to the skeptic, but does not limitless power also mean the power to be irrational without justification? — Ravi Zacharias

You cannot knock a man down who will not stand up, nor argue with a skeptic. — Austin O'Malley

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

Because of the foundational importance of the New Testament, my analysis of its reliability consumed much of my two-year investigation into Christianity when I was a skeptic. I subjected the Gospels to eight tests they might face in a court of law - the intention test, the ability test, the character test, the consistency test, the bias test, the cover-up test, the corroboration test, and the adverse witness test - to determine whether they could be considered trustworthy.23 My verdict was that their essential reliability is beyond serious doubt. — Ravi Zacharias

I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast? — Douglas Hofstadter

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

But promoting philosophical skepticism is not quite the mission of this book. If awareness of the Black Swan problem can lead us into withdrawal and extreme skepticism, I take here the exact opposite direction. I am interested in deeds and true empiricism. So, this book was not written by a Sufi mystic, or even by a skeptic in the ancient or medieval sense, or even (we will see) in a philosophical sense, but by a practitioner whose principal aim is not to be a sucker in things that matter, period. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You can feed a skeptic the party line but you can't make him swallow it. — Marty Rubin

Nevertheless, should you have any doubts that we are stating sound doctrines, look up the references and see exactly what the Bible says and believe it in preference to any man. You cannot go wrong with this kind of advice. But in doing this, be sure you adhere to what is written, and that you do not let preconceived ideas cause you to be biased on any point. Do not try to make the Bible conform to your ideas. Always reconcile your ideas to the Bible. Let the plain language of the references given be read and understood in the same literal way that we would understand similar statements in any other book — Finis Jennings Dake

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

I urge the media to start referring to climate skeptics as what they really are: climate assholes. — Bill Maher

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

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. — Bertrand Russell

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

He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his own soul. — Aldous Huxley

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

Once upon a time, I was a climate-change skeptic. — James Balog

The skeptic says that the believer has lost his own mind under God. On the contrary, it is the people who follow God who are most like his children, who willingly and consciously walk in his will; but those who oppose him oppose him vainly and at their own expense, and, figuratively, seem to be more like his tools. They don't diminish his glory, but instead he still manages to use them in ways of unconsciously carrying out his will. — Criss Jami

The greatest skeptic must now admit that the land and sea-borne trade of India had given her a world-wide fame not only for her gold, spices and silk, but for her religions and philosophies also. — Virchand Gandhi

Do you doubt God's existence, or are you making the argument for the sake of being a skeptic? — Suzanne Elizabeth Anderson

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

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. — George Carlin

I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like - humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic. — Michael Shermer

I don't think it's spiritually economic to be a skeptic about absolutely everything. — Beth Nugent

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

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

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

There are always going to be skeptics. Prove them wrong. — Robert Kiyosaki

I am the skeptic of skeptics. — Taylor Caldwell

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

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

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

I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose. — Robert Breault

We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man. — Sam Harris

A skeptic, I would ask for consistency first of all. — Sylvia Plath

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

"The Holy Ghost," Luther instructs us, "is not a skeptic." Not everyone can be, and that is really too bad. — Emile M. Cioran

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

Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it. — Oscar Wilde

For God to prove himself on demand, physically, would be a grave disappointment, and the strongest Christians should be considerably grateful that he chooses not to do so. The skeptic endlessly demands proof, yet God refuses to insult the true intelligence of man, the '6th sense', the chief quality, the acumen which distinguishes man from the rest of creation, faith. — Criss Jami

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? — Douglas Adams

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

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt. — Vita Sackville-West

A skeptic is a person who, when he sees the handwriting on the wall, claims it is a forgery. — Morris Bender

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. — Christopher Hitchens

The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts
the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

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

If Christians always seemed to be the most intelligent and the most righteous of men, I'd be a skeptic. — Criss Jami

Actually I'm pretty adamant about, you know, the whole God thing and it seems that skeptics are by and large atheists or something approaching that, which I strongly identify with. So it turned out to be a good thing and I have become enthusiastically part of it. — Jamie Hyneman

[The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history. — Ron Chernow

Skilled verse is the work of a profound skeptic. — Paul Valery

If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief in all that would not be a leap of faith and it would not a courageous act of humanity; it would just be ... a prudent insurance policy. I'm not interested in the insurance industry. I am tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way light amuses itself on water. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The true skeptic is skeptical even about skepticism. — Marty Rubin

Nietzsche said we will never rid ourselves of God because we have too much faith in grammar/language.

Lacan said because of the religious tenets of language, religion will triumph.

Chomsky, master linguist, says 'there are no skeptics. You can discuss it in a philosophy seminar but no human being can - in fact - be a skeptic.'

These musings shed light on Soren K's leap to faith idea. This is more nuanced than the circular leap of faith argument he's been wrongly accused of...

Soren is saying that, as we use the logic of language to express existence and purpose, we will always leap TO faith in a superior, all encompassing, loving force that guides our lives.

This faith does not negate our reason. It simply implies that the reasoning of this superior force is superior to our own. Edwin Abbott crystalizes this in Flatland. — Chester Elijah Branch

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

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.

We discover truth by asking rapier-like questions that cut through the thick fog of doctrinarism. Artists and philosophers must be subversive: we need these rebellious cynics to ask questions, they must resist cultural norms; seek out truths that are not self-evident and challenge everything. Doubt, not blind belief, is essential for discovering truth. — Kilroy J. Oldster

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

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

In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture ... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair. — Thomas Nagel

Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. — Sam Harris

These days it seems that physical truth can easily be rearranged, rethought, or re-created outright. Any image can be made pristine, all the warts can be removed. But returning to the source of a thing - the real source - means the photographer has to watch, dig, listen for voices, sniff the smells, and have many doubts. My life in photography has been lived as a skeptic. — Jerome Liebling

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

There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic. — Margaret Oliphant

When confronted with a demand that the universe have a cause, infidels have usually pointed out that God was not much of an explanation. This is true enough, but not really a positive argument. After mechanistic explanation became popular, infidels liked to restrict causality to the chain of causes in an eternal material universe, pointing out that no supernatural cause was then necessary. Plausible, but still rather defensive. Today's skeptic can do better. In all likelihood, the universe is uncaused. It is random. It just is. — Taner Edis

A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. — Timothy Keller

Look at it another way. A stack of five hundred sheets of paper is two to three inches high. How high would the stack be if it had 6 x 1023 sheets? That stack would reach from the earth to the sun, not once, but more than one million times.2 Yet, in about two gulps of water, God has packed that many molecules. The miracle of walking on water is small for Him who created it in the first place. The multiplication of bread was but a simple command for Him when the very earth was brought forth at His command. (C. S. Lewis commented that a slow miracle is no easier to perform than an instant one.) The skeptic, of course, will challenge such credulity that accepts wholesale such stories, not realizing that what they swallow in a glass of water is a miracle in and of itself! The — Ravi Zacharias

Being a skeptic just means being rational and empirical: thinking and seeing before believing. — Michael Shermer

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

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

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

Searching for truth without skepticism, is like having sex without a genital. — Abhijit Naskar

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

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