Thomas Henry Buckle Quotes

My skepticism is strong, but my curiosity is stronger.

Ask BIG questions, find BIG answers.

I appear as a skeptic, who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, all discovery and all innovation.

Galileo called doubt the father of invention; it is certainly the pioneer.

There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.

To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.

Constant and frequent questioning is the first key to wisdom … For through doubting we are led to inquire, and by inquiry we perceive the truth.

The only way we can fly planes and use computers is because people were curious about their world and also skeptical about the things they were told to be immutable, so they figured out other ways of doing things.

I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.

The key to all sciences is unquestionably the question mark. To the word How? we owe most of our greatest discoveries. Wisdom in life may perhaps consist in asking ourselves on all occasions: Why?

Basically, the Buddhist attitude is that you should not accept certain things through sheer faith. And for that you need a skeptical attitude. Buddha himself made this clear to his followers. He said you should not accept those things I taught out of respect for me, but rather through investigation by yourself.

Assume nothing, question everything.

Doubt is the first step towards knowledge, not faith.

The greatest discoveries all start with the question "Why?"

Every time you do something, make something, it's final in a way, but it's not. It immediately raises a great set of questions. And if you become a question addict, which I am, you immediately have something you need to pursue.

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.

Uncertainty is a very good thing: it's the beginning of an investigation, and the investigation should never end.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask.

I enjoy science, and I'm a very curious person. I always want to know the reason behind everything, big or small.

By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth.

The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.