“Nothing strengthens the case for scepticism more than the fact that there are people who are not sceptics. If they all were, they would be wrong.”

“Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them.”

“don’t confuse scepticism as an attitude, or a method, with scepticism as a philosophy. Socrates was sceptical in temperament, and his method was to question everything. But he believed in absolute truth; he was no sceptic.”

“In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”

“No conclusion can be more agreable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limites of human reason and capacity”

“She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.”