Beliefs Quotes
Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.
Abbey, Edward
Belief in God? An afterlife? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet.
Abbey, Edward
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
Adler, Alfred
It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
Allen, Steve
...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers. No matter how assured we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions. This is true in religion as it is in politics, and is self evident to all except fanatics and the naive. As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be advised to leave them to heaven. They will not, unfortunately, do us the same courtesy. They attack us and each other, and whatever their protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword. My own belief in God, then, is just that a matter of belief, not knowledge. My respect for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth. But even well educated Christians are frustrated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record. Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it. Some Christians, alas, resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
Anon.
Theory: when you have ideas. Ideology: when ideas have you.
Bacon, Francis
If a man will begin incertainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin in doubts he shall end in certainties
Bacon, Francis
For what a man would like to to be true, that he more readily believes.
Barrie, James Matthew
Every time a child says, "I don't believe in fairies" there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
Burroughs, John
It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.
Butler, Samuel
Cursed is he that does not know when to shut his mind. An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or may be found a little draughty.
Chapelain, Maurice
The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
Clifford, W.K.
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
Confucius
I hear and I forget. I see and I believe. I do and I understand.
de Montaigne, Michel
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Dwight, John Sullivan
The Bible is a window in this prison of hope, through which we look into eternity.
Einstein, Albert
Conceptions without experience are void; experience without conceptions is blind.
Eldridge, Paul
Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears beauty.
Feynman, Richard Phillip
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't have to... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
France, Anatole
To die for an idea is to place a pretty high price upon conjectures.
France, Anatole
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.
Froude, James A.
The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.
Galsworthy, John
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Gita, Bhagavad
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
Goethe, Johann Von
I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.
Hungarian Proverb
The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.
Huxley, Thomas H.
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
Ingersoll, Robert G.
The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.
Ingersoll, Robert G.
Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
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Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
King Jr., Martin Luther
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Korzybski, Alfred
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
La Rochefoucauld, François
Those who obstinately oppose the most widely held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken, and they do not want backseats.
Lamb, Charles
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
Leery, Timothy
You can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.
Locke, John
Earthly minds, like mud walls ,resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturb them.
Mencken, H.L.
The public demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.
Mill, John Stuart
One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.
Pliny the Elder
So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain, namely, that nothing is certain...
Ruskin, John
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
Russell, Bertrand
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Russell, Bertrand
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Russell, Bertrand
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
Russell, Bertrand
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Schnitzler, Arthur
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.
Smith, Adam
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.
Terence
You believe that easily which you hope for earnestly.
Tolstoy, Leo
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
Twain, Mark
We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.
Twain, Mark
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
Unknown
If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.
Voltaire
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.
Wilde, Oscar
Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.
Wilde, Oscar
To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.
Wilde, Oscar
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
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At the core of all well founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
Zappa, Frank
Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There's a world, you see, which has people in it who believe in a variety of different things. Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, use that something to support their own existence.