Quotes about Skepticism

Most critics are not well-equipped to defend their own faith. They have rarely thought through what they believe and have relied more on generalizations and slogans than on careful reflection. To expose their error, take your cue from Columbo. Scratch your head, rub your chin, pause for a moment, then say, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?

In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.

It is then I face a momentous decision. Shivering in the rags of my seventy-four years, I have two choices. I can escape below into skepticism and intellectualism, hanging on for dear life. Or, with radical amazement, I can stay on deck and boldly stand in surrendered faith to the truth of my belovedness, caught up in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God. And learn to pray.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor.

Kids are smart: don't underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don't even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error.

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

I never took it for granted that they believed any of even the most basic affirmations of the Christian faith concerning such matters as God and Jesus, sin and salvation, but always tried to speak to their skepticism and to honor their doubts. I made a point of never urging on them anything I did not believe myself. I was candid about what, like them, I was puzzled by and uncertain of. I tried to be myself. I tried to be honest.

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

The latter stage is apt to end in cynicism as we wonder what the one who praises really wants.