Lucas Neff Quotes

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 think the appropriate kind of skepticism is this: you've got to be asking questions all the time, you've also got to make sure that you're doing so in the spirit of genuinely wanting to find the answers - and that also means being open. I battle with this: I know I tend to be very skeptical and as a result, I veer towards the dismissive. But being aware of the tendency, I like to challenge my own skepticism and make sure it's not just knee-jerk. You need to be skeptical towards yourself as well. When you're only skeptical outwards you've got an unbalanced skepticism.

I don't want you to trust me, I want you to question everything I say.

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

Believe those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it.

I was 7 years old, and I challenged everything. I never accepted answers on face value.

You are your own best teacher. My advice is to question all things. Seek for answers, and when you find what seems to be an answer, question that, too.

They had applied their doubts to the very head that had introduced doubt as a tool for advancing knowledge. And in the end they gave the head a nod.

The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew.

Children should be taught to question everything . . . everything they read and everything they hear.

Skepticism is not a position; skepticism is an approach to claims, in the same way that science is not a subject but a method.

I say with my own authority that if you go on questioning without accepting anybody's answer, including mine, by and by you will find that the answer is not found but the question disappears.

Faith without challenge is nothing.

Everyone has the right to doubt everything as often as he pleases and the duty to do it at least once. No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.

To doubt has more of faith ... than that blank negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting trotters.

Great intellects are skeptical.

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil.

Sometimes people think you’re smart if you question the status quo, if nothing else.

I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.

It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage.

Read – and be curious. And if somebody says to you: 'Things are this way. You can't change it' - don't believe a word.

We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.

Skepticism is the first step towards truth.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.