#skeptic

That's all right," she told him. "I can manage. I can sleep outside just fine." Four pairs of eyes looked at her with a distinctly male skepticism. ↗

— Ilona Andrews

#fate-s-edge #funny #gaston #george #ilona-andrews

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#humility #skepticism #men

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. ↗

— Robert K. Merton

#skepticism #faith

Imagine if it happened to you: All of a sudden you find this thing on your wrist and people are telling you it has powers. I would be a little skeptical myself. ↗

— Yancy Butler

#happened #i #imagine #little #myself

Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, that's what keeps them digging rather than simply accepting the official line, whether it comes from government or corporate bureaucrats. ↗

— Linda Chavez

#bureaucrats #comes #corporate #digging #government

I think whenever you see what may be the seeds of a third party, you need to be very skeptical because there's not a very good track record for third parties. ↗

— Candy Crowley

#good #i #i think #may #need

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#marriage #moral-revolution #philosophy #politics #skepticism

God is always trying to give blessings to us, but our minds are usually too full to receive them. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#blessings #clouded-thoughts #confusion #delusions #doubt

Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#faith #skepticism #ufo #death

In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#fable #jesus #myth #skepticism #life