A Quote by Thomas Jefferson

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Thomas Jefferson

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Cause Certainly Credulity Human Human Mind Mind Natural Skepticism

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Thomas Jefferson
American - President
April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826

Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Thomas Jefferson

Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

Christopher Hitchens

Creationists argue that natural selection is only a negative process, and therefore cannot create anything. Chopra argues that skepticism is only a negative process, and therefore does not lead to knowledge. Both are wrong for the same reasons. They ignore the generation of diversity and new ideas upon which natural selection and skepticism acts. Weeding out the unfit is critical to both - natural selection allows evolution to proceed, and skepticism allows science to advance.

Steven Novella

Radical skepticism is no more critical than is credulity.

Craig A. Evans

I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.

Ralph Barton Perry

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.

Richard Dawkins

A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.

William E. Gladstone

Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.

Lydia M. Child

It's only fashion that has said the pendulum has swung from extreme skepticism about extraterrestrial life to extreme credulity. The truth is somewhere in between.

Paul Davies

And when comfort is what we want, one of the most powerful tonics alternative medicine offers is the word 'natural.' This word implies a medicine untroubled by human limitations, contrived wholly by nature or God or perhaps intelligent design. What 'natural' has come to mean to us in the context of medicine is 'pure' and 'safe' and 'benign'. But the use of 'natural' as a synonym for 'good' is almost certainly a product of our profound alienation from the natural world.

Eula Biss

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

George Bernard Shaw

These matters require what I think of as the Shakespearean cast of thought. That is to say, a fine credulity about everything, kept in check by a lively skepticism about everything.... It keeps you constantly alert to every possibility.

Robertson Davies

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity.

Bertrand Russell

Belief is the natural state of things. It is the default option. We just believe. We believe all sorts of things. Belief is natural; disbelief, skepticism, science, is not natural.

Michael Shermer

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

Joseph Conrad

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Quote by Thomas Jefferson

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