Robin Skelton Quotes

It is not by believing but by doubting that one can attain to the truth, which is ever changing form and condition.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

If you question anything enough, you'll begin to doubt it.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt

The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.

In philosophy you're never 100% sure. You're always undermining what you think you know. That's always been my philosophy and my intellectual ethos.

It is not proof that I sought. I, of all men, know that proof is but a fallacy invented by man to justify to himself and his fellows his own crass lust and folly.

Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt.

Question everything. Your love, your religion, your passion. If you don't have questions, you'll never find answers.

Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.

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

There is no better soporific and sedative than skepticism.

Thou shalt not take anything on faith

Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

To philosophize is to doubt.

It is no sin to doubt some things, but it may be fatal to believe everything.

He believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know, but as the essence of knowing.

The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows, and he compels you to say, at last, that your faith has no foundation in fact.

Skepticism is not a position; it's a process.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.