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Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
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No source entered for Contribution #3819
Ah, my dear Voltaire, doubt is an acquired and cultivated taste, like Laphroaig Whisky or fine truffles, and quite as exquisite. --in response to Voltaire's comment: "Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one."
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http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=25988
madscientist
Contribution #3729
Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.
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No source entered for Contribution #3728
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.
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No source entered for Contribution #3726
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
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No source entered for Contribution #3725
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
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No source entered for Contribution #3724
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
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No source entered for Contribution #3723
Not far from the invention of fire must rank the invention of doubt.
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No source entered for Contribution #3715
Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
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No source entered for Contribution #3658
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
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Source type: Book
Liberation Ecology
by Frances Moore Lappe
Page 115
http://
Contribution #3656
The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God.
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No source entered for Contribution #3628
Whenever we teach our children that groundless faith is a virtue, we pave the way for groundless violence.
If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose.
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No source entered for Contribution #3503
Society cannot exist without inequality of fortunes and the inequality of fortunes could not subsist without religion. Whenever a half-starved person is near another who is glutted, it is impossible to reconcile the difference if there is not an authority who tells him to.
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No source entered for Contribution #3481
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
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No source entered for Contribution #3477
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.
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No source entered for Contribution #3476
A conclusion is simply where you stopped thinking.
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Contribution #3438
The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke.
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No source entered for Contribution #3429
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
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No source entered for Contribution #3365
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
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Source type: Book
Page 297
http://
Contribution #3233
In science, a theory is a rigorously tested statement of general principles that explains observable and recorded aspects of the world. A scientific theory therefore describes a higher level of understanding that ties "facts" together. A scientific theory stands until proven wrong -- it is never proven correct.
In science, 'fact' can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.
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Source type: Book
Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History
Page 161.
Published by Penguin
, London
, 1991
http://
Contribution #3177
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Only the madman is absolutely sure.
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No source entered for Contribution #3115
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.
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No source entered for Contribution #3098
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.
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No source entered for Contribution #3015
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
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No source entered for Contribution #2998
To the scientists of the Renaissance, your critic was really your ally, helping you advance upon reality. Critics in science are not like drama critics, determining flops and successes. Criticism to scientists is just another means of finding out whether they're wrong, like running another experiment to see if it confirms or refutes a theory. Along with the advocacy principle of the courtroom, it is one of the best ways human beings have evolved to get closer to the truth.
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Source type: Book
Learned Optimism
Page 42
Published by Pocket Books
, New York
, 1990, 1998
http://
Contribution #2812
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
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mailer from "The Skeptical Inquirer"
Contribution #2734
The fundamental nature of science is a skeptical outlook on the world, to view evidence, and explanations with a jaundiced eye, then to demand layer upon layer of evidence, from all sides of the problem, consistent with the hypothesis, and never give up the possibility that there is another explanation *consistent with the evidence* that explains it all and permits predictions. This tool alone differentiates real science from any of the other facile substitutes that are being promulgated by various charlatans as “science”.
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
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No source entered for Contribution #2414
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
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No source entered for Contribution #2410
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
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No source entered for Contribution #2082
The man who questions opinions is wise. The man who quarrels with facts is a fool.
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No source entered for Contribution #2002
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
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No source entered for Contribution #1971
The fundamental difference between the liberal and the illiberal outlook is that the former regards all questions as open to discussion and all opinions as open to a greater or lesser measure of doubt, while the latter holds in advance that certain opinions are absolutely unquestionable, and that no argument against them must be allowed be heard.
What is curious about this position is the belief that if impartial investigation were permitted it would lead men to the wrong conclusion, and that ignorance is, therfore, the only safeguard against terror. This point of view cannot be accepted by any man who wishes reason rather than prejudice to govern human action.
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
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No source entered for Contribution #1707
Thoughts are free and subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature...create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy from which new arts flow.
The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.
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No source entered for Contribution #1342
Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
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No source entered for Contribution #981
I am
all in favor of the skeptical mind. Do not believe anything unless you have
experienced it. Do not believe anything - go on questioning, however long it
takes.
Learn from yesterday, live for
today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Believe
those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Isn't it the moment of most profound
doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the
very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life
without first experiencing its absurdity...
...the number of saintly men has not yet risen to the level where the census makes them a separate statistical category.
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Contribution #551
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
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Source type: Website
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Viewed on April 1, 2008
Contribution #399
Faith lives in honest doubt.
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No source entered for Contribution #393
Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death.
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Miguel De Unamuno
Viewed on April 1, 2008
Contribution #389
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
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Wilson Mizner
Viewed on April 1, 2008
Contribution #388
There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutions to cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
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Erich Fromm
Viewed on April 1, 2008
Contribution #378
Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.
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Romain Rolland
Viewed on April 1, 2008
Contribution #365
To know how to wonder and question is the first step of the mind toward discovery.
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No source entered for Contribution #55
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
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No source entered for Contribution #34
It's not what we don't know that hurts: it's what we know that ain't so.
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No source entered for Contribution #30
What does skepticism look like in a person?
(0 responses)
