Quotes about Skepticism

"Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts" (2 Peter 3:3).

Does the mirror change and bend when the scoffer stands before it laughing and scoffing at it? No, the mirror does not change and bend but remains the same as it was. Brethren, neither does God change or bend when scoffers laugh and scoff at Him. The unchanging and All-pure God knows that the scoffer scoffs at himself. By his scoffing at the holy things of God, the scoffer bends himself and makes himself hideous and the holy things of God remain intact.

O, how already in our times, in our days, many scoffers are already here! Many, too many but their multitudes are weaker than the One and Only One. What is a lot of dust before a strong wind? You have only to wait, to wait armed with patience until a strong wind blows.

Many and too many scoffers are already here, who scoff at God's word. They offer their own words in place of God's word; they offer the unholy in place of the holy, the putrid in place of the healthy, death dealing in place of life creating. The word of God is like a strong wind and their words are as dust.

The scoffers are already here, many and too many that scoff at God's works and still many more will arrive. They praise their works above God's works and say that the works of their hands are better and more comprehensible that the works of God. Their works are thievery; for all the good that they built, they built from God's materials and according to the likeness of God's buildings; and all the evil that they have built, they built from the devil's materials, and according to the likeness of the devil's buildings. Therefore, of what will the dust boast? With what will the scoffers praise today or tomorrow, when wild asses trample over their graves with their hooves?

All-pure Lord, Holy and Powerful are Your words, as a strong wind and holy are Your works, and there is no number or measure of them. All-pure Lord, save our tongues from scoffing and save our lives from the scoffers.

To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.

I do not hesitate to maintain, that what we are conscious of is constructed out of what we are not conscious of,-that our whole knowledge, in fact, is made up of the unknown and the incognisable.

It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.  I see too much parroting, to much regurgitation of half-digested radical rhetoric…

In practice, the goal of skepticism is not the discovery of truth, but the exposure of other people's errors. It plays a useful role in science, religion, scholarship, and common sense. But we need to remember that it is a weapon serving belief or self-interest; we need to be skeptical of skeptics. The more militant the skeptic, the stronger the belief.

One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words, we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.

All that the posture of skepticism accomplishes is to freeze the ego in an ignorantist poverty that never stretches or diversifies its resources of imagination or understanding.  Any uncultured cretin can close his eyes and try to reduce the issues down to linear simplisms and say, "I am doubting, I am proving my magisterial or sovereign control over my own mind."  Doubt is a useful and significant test of one's critical powers, but by itself it bears little if any significant cultural charge of enlightenment or satori; indeed it is the very opposite kind of thing.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.
... There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything else has only secondary value.
This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be deceived? Is it the will not to deceive? ... One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived.

Indeed, now and for the forseeable future, cyber-evangelism is best understood as an escapist, quasi-religious fantasy, which reflects an oddly dated, Jetsons-esque faith in scientific progress and its potential to cure all that ails us. Even those cyber-evangelical books published well after September 11, 2001, and the end of the dot-com boom echo the hysterical techno-optimism of the late 1990s. At their best, they raise some diverting questions: Would you rather live in a pleasant virtual world, or in an unpleasant real one? Would cyber-sex satisfy you? Would we still be recognizably human if we were immortal, or had IQ's over 1,000, or were immune to pain?

But I felt my cognitive-dissonance alarm clanging whenever I reminded myself of the issues that preoccupy most mature adults these days: terrorism, overpopulation, poverty, environmental degradation, AIDS and other diseases, and all the pitfalls of ordinary life.

I try to forget this vale of tears myself now and then by reading books like William Gibson’s Neuromancer or watching movies like The Matrix. But I also try not to confuse science fiction with science.

My experience is symptomatic of deep problems that have long plagued the environmental movement. Activists who vandalize Hummer dealerships and destroy logging equipment are criminal ecoterrorists. Environmental groups who cry doom and gloom to keep donations flowing only hurt their credibility. As an undergraduate in the 1970s, I learned (and believed) that by the 1990s overpopulation would lead to worldwide starvation and the exhaustion of key minerals, metals and oil, predictions that failed utterly. Politics polluted the science and made me an environmental skeptic.

Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming.

I have discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color - something which exists before all forms and colors appear.  This is a very important point.  No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea...  In constantly seeking to actualize your ideal, you will have no time for composure.  But if you are always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing... then at that moment you will have perfect composure.

In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically.

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

Who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had?

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

Skepticism is slow suicide.

I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism, for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.

When in situations of stress we wonder if there is any more in us to give, we can be comforted to know that God, who knows our capacity perfectly, placed us here to succeed. No one was foreordained to fail or to be wicked. When we feel overwhelmed, let us recall the assurance given through Joseph that God, who knows we "cannot bear all things now," will not over program us; he will not press upon us more than we can bear. (D&C 50:40) 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.

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.

This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking "What do I know?"

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.

Do not let yourself be tainted with a barren skepticism.

Can you dissolve your ego? Can you abandon the idea of self and other? Can you relinquish the notions of male and female, short and long, life and death? Can you let go of all these dualities and embrace the Tao without skepticism or panic? If so, you can reach the heart of the Integral Oneness.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Hands untrained in the use of tools destroy what they want to build. It takes skill to use tools to achieve the result desired, whether it's tearing down an old house or building a new one. Skepticism is a tool serving both purposes. But it must be used by a trained mind, a mind capable of disciplined thinking.

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

A sense of relationship and copartnership with God involves the concept of universal brotherhood and that will help to develop intelligent tolerance, open-mindedness, and good-natured optimism. Life is really a battle between fear and faith, pessimism and optimism. Fear and pessimism paralyze men with skepticism and futility. One must have a sense of humor to be an optimist in times like these. And you young women will need a sense of humor if you marry these young men and try to live with them. Golden Kimball once said in a conference, "The Lord Himself must like a joke or he wouldn't have made some of you people." But your good humor must be real, not simulated. Let your smiles come from the heart and they will become contagious. You may see men on the street any day whose laugh is only a frozen grin with nothing in it but teeth. Men without humor tend to forget their source, lose sight of their goal, and with no lubrication in their mental crankshafts, they must drop out of the race. Lincoln said, "Good humor is the oxygen of the soul." And someone paraphrased, "The surly bird catches the germ."

Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.