#scepticism

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

#religion #scepticism #sceptics #skepticism #skeptics

Scepticism is as important for a good journalist as it is for a good scientist. ↗

— Freeman Dyson

#important #journalist #scepticism #scientist

Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#intelligence #scepticism

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong. ↗

— Blaise Pascal

#fortifies #more #nothing #scepticism #some

Scepticism is a necessary and vital part of the journalist's toolkit. But when scepticism becomes cynicism it can close off thought and block the search for truth. ↗

— Jeremy Paxman

#block #close #cynicism #journalist #necessary

The terrible error in the course of human civilization is undoubtedly the defective judgment that allowed religious authorities usurp the foundation of societal morality, in which all collective ethics of humankind must take a cause. This appalling blunder is comparable only to assigning the leper exclusive franchise to run beauty clinics in the society; this can only lead to cycles upon cycles of common infection syndrome. ↗

— Adebowale Ojowuro

#ethics-and-moral-philosophy #freethought #new-book #religion #scepticism

Oxford also taught me something else - it taught me scepticism. ↗

— Frank Scott

#else #me #oxford #scepticism #something

The three main sources of scepticism are first, that not every people desires freedom; second, that democracy in certain parts of the world would be dangerous; and third, that there is little the world's democracies can do to advance freedom outside their countries. ↗

— Natan Sharansky

#certain #countries #dangerous #democracies #democracy

This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible. ↗

— Natan Sharansky

#behind #curtain #democratic #few #generation

There's a certain kind of scepticism that can't bear uncertainty. ↗

— Rupert Sheldrake

#certain #kind #scepticism #uncertainty