Self talk and self prayer: When you audible the first and correctly interpret, the white coats correct you in a nuthouse. When you audible the second and misinterpret, the dinner coats swear you to an...

What good is ye world when ye canst not livest hither.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos...

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

Great intellects are skeptical.

We must learn to live with contradictions, to have faith in skepticism, to advance toward the solution of a problem by admitting as a possibility that it may be insoluble.

Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just THIS?

The linguistic and literary reality of the biblical tradition is folkloristic in essence. The concept of a benei Israel … is a reflection of no sociopolitical entity of the historical state of Israel of the...

You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil!...

Observation: I can’t see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs.

Think outside the box? Indeed. But to add balance to that, one should not in the process forget what the inside of the box looks like as well. Those who are best at thinking outside...

Skeptics always want miracles such as stepping down from the Cross, but never the greater miracle of forgiveness.

I’d rather be encouraged by an ant to live than taught to doubt by fifty skeptics.

I am an infidel today. I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is...

I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always...

INDECISION NOW!’ isn’t a battle cry that’s going to rouse anybody’s blood. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t the sanest one.

We all ought to understand we’re on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn’t do kids any harm for a few years but it isn’t smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for...

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...

We come at this problem of Iraqi compliance with a high degree of skepticism about their (Iraq’s) intentions.

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...

Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for...

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul — breaking the mental manacles — getting the brain out of bondage — giving courage to thought — filling the world with mercy, justice,...

Believing everyone is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous.

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.

Trust is tough. Once trust has been broken by multiple people on multiple occasions, believing in anyone or anything becomes increasingly difficult. Much of the skepticism of our world can be traced back to broken...

magical reason”—pervading secular thought and experience in modern society. Science and technology are for most people a new religion, and their orthodoxies are believed with the same fervor.

Why do we not accept ESP as a psychological fact? Rhine has offered enough evidence to have convinced us on almost any other issue… Personally, I do not accept ESP for a moment, because it...

One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is...

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be...

We live our lives based on the assumption that we directly perceive, and are accurately interpreting, objects with a fair amount of accuracy. Since we naturally assume that we are apprehending objects of cognition as...

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics.

The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these...

Skepticism, not cleanliness, is next to godliness. Skepticism is the father of freedom. It is like the pry that holds open the door for truth to slip in.

Believers in psychic phenomena… appear to have won a decisive victory and virtually silenced opposition…. This victory is the result of careful experimentation and intelligent argumentation. Dozens of experimenters have obtained positive results in ESP...

I wanted to cast doubt on the step he was about to take, to help him see there are other ways to live, other ways to seek knowledge, love…even self-transformation. I wanted to convince him...

Nevertheless, a distinction must be made between skepticism as a philosophical thesis and skepticism as an attitude in life. As a philosophical thesis, it is a contradictory one, since it affirms the impossibility of knowing...

We are talking about a bet, remember, and Pascal wasn’t claiming that his wager enjoyed anything but very long odds. Would you bet on God’s valuing dishonestly faked belief (or even honest belief) over honest...

There is nothing worse than certainty. Doubt makes us weak. That is why it’s so important. I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to be powerful.

I don’t differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.

I do not believe the press is guilty of the charge that it abandoned its healthy skepticism in Iraq , and I would hate to see it draw the inference from New Orleans that ‘in...

It all depends on what people you’re talking about helping. That’s the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet – they’re all so incredibly selfish.

The cold logic of mid-twentieth-century atheism has now given way to an era of renewed ‘spirituality,’ but it is an awakening more thrapeutic than pious, more attuned to self-expression than self-denial. It is now fashionable...

Since total skepticism about ultimate beliefs is strictly impossible, in that no belief can be doubted except on the basis of some other belief, indifference is always in danger of giving place to some sort...

It’s natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer. But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming naive impressions to figure out how...

…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing...