Believe only half of what you see, and nothing that you hear.

"It is a tedious cliche (and, unlike many cliches, it isn't even true) that science concerns itself with how questions, but only theology is equipped to answer why questions. What on Earth is a why question? Not every English sentence beginning with the word 'why' is a legitimate question."

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

You're uncomfortable with scientific scepticism. But the reason it developed is that the world is complicated. It's subtle. Everybody's first idea isn't necessarily right. Also, people are capable of self-deception. Scientists, too. All sorts of socially abhorrent doctrines have at one time or another been supported by scientists, well-known scientists, famous brand-name scientists. And, of course, politicians. And respected religious leaders. Slavery, for instance, or the Nazi brand of racism. Scientists make mistakes, theologians make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. It's part of being human. You say it yourselves: 'To err is.' So the way you avoid the mistakes, or at least reduce the chance that you'll make one, is to be sceptical. You test the ideas. You check them out by rigorous standards of evidence. I don't think there is such a thing as received truth. But when you let the different opinions debate, when any sceptic can perform his or her own experiment to check some contention out, then the truth tends to emerge. That's the experience of the whole history of science. It isn't a perfect approach, but it's the only one that seems to work.

Scepticism, that dry-rot of the intellect, had left him without a whole thought in his head.

The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great scepticism – which foretells a coming change. As soon as scepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.