"I do not believe that skepticism is the default mode for humans. For one thing, we are bothered by the inconsistency of saying that we know that nothing can be known, or that it is true that there is no truth. But I beleive also that we all feel within ourselves the misfit of skepticism, as Cinderella's stepsisters did the glass slipper. (And you might say that for centuries we have been cutting off our big toe to make the slipper fit.) For knowing nothing at all, you and I seem to know a lot. Or at least we seem to live like it--that is, when it isn't more personally advantageous to be skeptics. Vast portions of our lives and jobs and society are devoted to information, learning, and discovery. What's more, we continually make advances from unknowing to knowing, where in the calssroom or the science lab or in the ordinary affairs of life. This belies skepticism. We've felt compelled to call ourselves skeptics in the name of integrity. But all along we felt the inauthenticity of such a label, since our human lives, just because they are human lives, are a tapestry of acts of knowing." -Esther Meek