“Did you ever feel a creeping,That awoke you from your sleeping,That made your pulses flutter and bristled all your hair;While a horrid stealthy crawlingPrevented you from calling,And something seem...”

“The world,” he said, “grows hourly more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency."The Phantom Coach”

“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”

“...reason rationalizes reality for him (Dr. Nathan) as it does for the rest of us, in the Freudian sense of providing a more palatable or convenient explanation, and there are so many subjects abou...”

“Writing my own novels in the '90s...I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor. ”

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettie...”

“To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. ”

“The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.”

“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be t...”

“One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.”

“Trust is tough. Once trust has been broken by multiple people on multiple occasions, believing in anyone or anything becomes increasingly difficult. Much of the skepticism of our world can be trace...”