#Skepticism

"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."

"No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature."

"People wrap themselves in their beliefs. And they do it in such a way that you can't set them free. Not even the truth will set them free."

"I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do."

"Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable."

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true."

"I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room -- room for the human mind."

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

"Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither."

"I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom."

"I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical."

"I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably."

"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 him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins."

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

"I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!"

"Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue."

"What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts."

"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."

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law."