100+ Incredulity Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.45, e-artnow

topic: Struggle, Heart, People, Incredulity, Submerged

No one becomes forty without incredulity and a sense of outrage.

- Clifford Bax

topic: Anger, Outrage, Forty, Incredulity

To revenge reasonable incredulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt.

- Samuel Johnson

source: Samuel Johnson (2010). “Journey to the Hebrides: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland & The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.104, Canongate Books

topic: Revenge, Guilt, Degrees, Incredulity, Insolence

Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity.

- Marshall McLuhan

topic: Evil, Secret, Needs, Incredulity, Kept Secrets

When incredulity becomes a faith, it is less rational than a religion.

- Jules de Goncourt

topic: Rational, Unbelief, Incredulity

Once you've stopped loving someone breaking his or her heart's just an unpleasant chore you have to get behind you. My God, you really don't love me anymore, do you? No matter your decency the victim's incredulity's potentially hilarious. You manage not to laugh.

- Glen Duncan

topic: Heart, Loving Someone, Laughing, Incredulity

The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.

- Adam Smith

source: Adam Smith (2012). “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, p.336, Courier Corporation

topic: Believe, Men, Wisdom And Experience, Incredulity, Scarce

A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.â€¦We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.

- Jostein Gaarder

topic: Hands, White, Differences, Incredulity, Sleight Of Hand

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.

- Niccolo Machiavelli

source: "The Prince". Book by Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513.

topic: Believe, Art Of War, Men, Incredulity, Defenders

Knowledge of divine things for the most part is lost to us by incredulity.

- Heraclitus

topic: Believe, Belief, Divine, Incredulity

What is divine escapes men's notice because of their incredulity.

- Heraclitus

topic: Men, Spirituality, Divine, Incredulity

For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity.

- Thucydides

source: Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.111, Simon and Schuster

topic: Men, Envy, Long, Incredulity

Looking back through the mists of time, I recall some distinctly religious experiences in my teens--when I was only fourteen years old to be precise. These experiences opened my mind to the idea of a Creator and that caring for other living things was a Christian duty. My parents were not strongly religious at the time and when I announced at that youthful age that I wanted to be a priest, it not unnaturally provoked some incredulity, even mirth. In the same year, I became a vegetarian, which--for family and friends--was even more vexing.

- Andrew Linzey

topic: Christian, Religious, Caring, Incredulity

Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, 'I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection.' I have dubbed this kind of fallacy 'the Argument from Personal Incredulity.' Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.

- Richard Dawkins

source: "River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life". Book by Richard Dawkins, March 20, 2014.

topic: Believe, Intellectual, Skins, Incredulity, Selection

Sisters don't need words. They have perfected a language of snarls and smiles and frowns and winks - expressions of shocked surprise and incredulity and disbelief. Sniffs and snorts and gasps and sighs - that can undermine any tale you're telling.

- Pam Brown

topic: Sister, Sarcastic, Sibling, Incredulity, Inspirational Sisterhood

Incredulity is not wisdom, but the worst kind of folly. It is folly, because it causes ignorance and mistake, with all the consequents of these; and it is very bad, as being accompanied with disingenuity, obstinacy, rudeness, uncharitableness, and the like bad dispositions; from which credulity itself, the other extreme sort of folly, is exempt.

- Isaac Barrow

source: Isaac Barrow, James Hamilton (1861). “The works of Isaac Barrow”, p.163

topic: Mistake, Ignorance, Causes, Incredulity

It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living--we who have survived--understand that our guilt is what links us to the dead. At all times we can hear them calling to us, a growing incredulity in their voices, You will not forget me -- will you? How can you forget me? I have no one but you.

- Joyce Carol Oates

topic: Voice, Guilt, Calling, Incredulity

... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal "the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry]." He said he didn't know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate's coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.

- Anna Julia Cooper

topic: Incredulity, Dismay

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

- Doris Lessing

topic: Ordinary, Flats, Feels, Incredulity

Scanning the newspapers and absorbing with a mixture of incredulity and indignation the enormities they report, I conclude that what England lacks today is, quite simply, sense.

- Paul Johnson

topic: America, World, Mixtures, Incredulity, Scanning

The human understanding is a revelation from its maker, which can never be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity or infidelity here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove this celestical communication. This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, that is, nature's God, that two and two are equal to four.

- John Adams

source: John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.66

topic: Communication, Two, Miracle, Incredulity, Christianity From Founding Fathers

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

- Colin Wilson

source: Colin Wilson (2011). “Afterlife: An Investigation”, p.307, Doubleday

topic: Believe, Passion, Self, Incredulity

When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with incredulity that habit awakens to finds its companion fled, itself alone.

- Ouida

topic: Lying, Passion, Long, Incredulity

So...have you ever thought about dyeing your hair punk-rocker-chick black? As I'm sure you've heard, I have a thing for brunettes and always avoid blondes." "I've heard. And no." "Too bad. Because you're making me rethink my stance about doing my friends' exes." i snorted, not even trying to hide my...incredulity? Surely I wasn't amused. "Your making me rethink my stance on cold-blooded homicide

- Gena Showalter

topic: Hair, Black, Trying, Incredulity, Rockers

You used your power to toss one rock at me?" he exclaimed, an almost comic note of incredulity in his voice. "On the contrary," I heard Dorian say pleasantly. "I didn't use magic for that. I just threw it.