Skeptical Quotes
The history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good science.
Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What`s left is magic. And it doesn`t work.
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
The hard but just rule is that if the ideas don`t work, you must throw them away. Don`t waste any neurons on what doesn`t work. Devote those neurons to new ideas that better explain the data. Valid criticism is doing you a favor.
No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason [...] is like giving medicine to the dead.
Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.
It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.
It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.
There is no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal. There is only the natural, the normal, and mysteries we have yet to explain.