lifelong skepticism................

      Like Churchill, Orwell saw little of his father, who traveled from Burma to visit his family in 1907, and then moved in with them when he retired in1912. "I barely saw my father before I was eight," Orwell noted.  By that time, the boy had been shipped off to boarding school.  The distant figure of Orwell's father "appeared to me simply as a gruff-voiced elderly man forever saying 'Don't.'"  So began Orwell's lifelong skepticism of authority.

-Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

On philosophers................

 PHILOSOPHY being nothing else but the study of Wisdom and Truth, it may with reason be expected, that those who have spent most Time and Pains in it should enjoy a greater calm and serenity of Mind, a greater clearness and evidence of Knowledge, and be less disturbed with Doubts and Difficulties than other Men. Yet so it is we see the Illiterate Bulk of Mankind that walk the High-ro.ad of plain, common Sense, and are governed by the Dictates of Nature, for the most part easy and undisturbed. To them nothing that's familiar appears unaccountable or difficult to comprehend. They complain not of any want of Evidence in their Senses, and are out of all danger of becoming Sceptics. But no sooner do we depart from Sense and Instinct to follow the Light of a Superior Principle, to reason, meditate, and reflect on the Nature of Things, but a thousand Scruples spring up in our Minds, concerning those Things which before we seemed fully to comprehend. Prejudices and Errors of Sense do from all Parts discover themselves to our view; and endeavouring to correct these by Reason we are insensibly drawn into uncouth Paradoxes, Difficulties, and Inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us as we advance in Speculation; till at length, having wander'd through many intricate Mazes, we find our selves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn Scepticism.

-George Berkeley

I suspend judgment........................

      Like the others, Skepticism amounted to a form of therapy.  This, at least, was true of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, the type originated by the Greek philosopher Pyrrho, who died about 275 BC, and later developed more rigorously by Sextus Empiricus in the second century AD. ("Dogmatic" or "Academic" Skepticism, the other kind, was less far-reaching.)   Some idea of the bizarre effect Pyrrhonism had on people is apparent from the story of how Henri Estienne, Montaigne's near-contemporary and first French translator of Sextus Empiricus, reacted to his encounter with  Sextus's Hypotyposes.  Working in his library one day, but feeling too ill and tired to do his usual work, he found a copy while browsing through an old box of manuscripts.  As soon as he started reading, he found himself laughing so heartily that his weariness left him and his intellectual energy returned.  Another scholar of the period, Gentian Hervet, had a similar experience.  He too came across Sextus by chance in his employer's library, and felt that a world of lightness and pleasure had opened up before him.  The work did not so much instruct or convince its readers as give them the giggles.
     A modern reader perusing the Hypotyposes might wonder what was so funny.  It does contain some sprightly examples, as philosophy books often do, but it does not seem wildly comic.  It is not obvious why it cured both Estienne and Hervet of their ennui—or why it had such an impact on Montaigne, who would find it the perfect antidote to Raymond Sebond and his solemn, inflated ideas of human importance.
     The key to the trick is the revelation that nothing in life need be taken seriously.  Pyrrhonism does not even take itself seriously.  Ordinary dogmatic Skepticism asserts the impossibility of knowledge;  it is summed up in Socrates's remark:  "All I know is that I know nothing."  Pyrrhonian Skepticism starts from this point, but then adds, in effect, "and I'm not even sure about that."  Having stated its one philosophical principle, it turns in a circle and gobbles itself up, leaving only a puff of absurdity.
      Pyrrhonians accordingly deal with all the problems life can throw at them by means of a single word which acts as a shorthand for this maneuver:  in Greek, epekho.  It means "I suspend judgment."  Or, in a different rendition given in French by Montaigne himself, je souliens:  "I hold back."  This phrase conquers all enemies;  it undoes them, so that they disintegrate into atoms before your eyes.

-Sarah Bakewell,  How To Live - 0r - A Life of Montaigne:  In One Questions And Twenty Attempts At An Answer

The beginning of western philosophy........

     In 490-470 B.C. Sparta and Athens, forgetting their jealousies and joining forces, fought off the effort of the Persians under Darius and Xerxes to turn Greece into a colony of an Asiatic empire.  In this struggle of youthful Europe against the senile East, Sparta provided the army and Athens the navy.  The war over, Sparta demobilized her troops, and suffered the economic disturbances natural to that process, while Athens turned her navy into a merchant fleet, and became one of the greatest trading cities of the ancient world.  Sparta relapsed into agricultural seclusion and stagnation, while Athens became a busy mart and port, the meeting place of many races of men and of diverse cults and customs, whose contact and rivalry begot comparison, analysis and thought.
      Traditions and dogmas rub one another down to a minimum in such centers of varied intercourse; where there are a thousand faiths we are apt to become sceptical of them all.  Probably the traders were the first sceptics; they has seen too much to believe too much;  and the general disposition of merchants to classify all men as either fools or knaves inclined them to question every creed.  Gradually, too, they were developing science; mathematics grew with the increasing complexity of exchange, astronomy with the increasing audacity of navigation.  The growth of wealth brought the leisure and security which are prerequisite of research and speculation;  men now asked the stars not only for guidance on the seas but as well for an answer to the riddles of the universe;  the first Greek philosophers were astronomers.  "Proud of their achievements," says Aristotle, "men pushed farther afield after the Persian wars; they took all knowledge for their province, and sought ever wider studies."  Men grew bold enough to attempt natural explanations of processes and events before attributed to supernatural agencies and powers;  magic and ritual slowly gave way to science and control; and philosophy began.

-Will Durant,  The Story of Philosophy

Thucydides......................

Then there is the matter of Thucydides himself.  Greece's preeminent historian was not merely an analytical and systematic writer of a great extant military history of Sparta and Athens.  He was also a brilliant philosopher who tried to impart to the often obscure events of the war a value that transcended his age.  In his own boast, his narrative would prove to be "a possession for all time,"  far more important than the war itself.
     Precisely because of this didactic nature of Thucydides' lengthy narrative - predicated on the belief that human nature is unchanging across time and space and thus predictable - the conflict of Athens and Sparta is supposed to serve as a lesson for what can happen to any people in any war in any age.  A central theme is the use and abuse of power, and how it lurks behind men's professions of idealism and purported ideology.  What men say, the speeches diplomats give, the reasons states go to war, all this "in word" (logos) is as likely to cloak rather than to elucidate what they will do "in deed" (ergon).  Thucydides teaches us to embrace skepticism, expecting us to look to national self-interest, not publicized grievances, when wars of our own age inevitably break out.

-Victor Davis Hanson,  A War Like No Other

Yep.....................................

"Cultivating skepticism is a key skill of investing, as well as citizenship."

-full story here

Skepticism...........................

Skepticism gets a bum rap because it tends to be associated with negative character traits.  Someone who disagrees could be considered "disagreeable."   Someone who dissents may be creating "dissension."  Maybe part of it is that "skeptical" sounds like "cynical."  Yet true skepticism is consistent with good manners, civil discourse, and friendly communications.
     Skepticism is about approaching the world by asking why things might not be true rather than why they are true.  It's a recognition that, while there is an objective truth, everything we believe about the world is not true.  Thinking in bets embodies skepticism by encouraging us to examine what we do and don't know and what our level of confidence is in our beliefs and predictions.  This moves us closer to what is objectively true.

-Annie Duke,  Thinking In Bets:  Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Color me skeptical.......................

Because I am an activist skeptic I am often asked specific questions about how to be a better skeptic. This is obviously a complex question, and I view skepticism (like all knowledge) as a journey not a destination. I am still trying to work out how to be a better skeptic.

-Steven Novella, as extracted from this post from the always interesting NeuroLogica blog