quotations about belief
The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Earth
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that ensures the successful outcome of the venture.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
Human beings believe just as they breathe -- in order to survive.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
With how much ease believe we what we wish!
JOHN DRYDEN
Cleopatra
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.
JOHN PERRY BARLOW
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence.
DAVID HUME
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Beliefs. Once entrenched in a culture, they persist, evolve and diverge, in a manner reminiscent of biological evolution.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Believing seems the most "mental" thing we do, the thing most remote from what is done by mere matter. The whole intellectual life consists of beliefs, and of the passage from one belief to another by what is called "reasoning." Beliefs give knowledge and error; they are the vehicles of truth and falsehood. Psychology, theory of knowledge and metaphysics revolve about belief, and on the view we take of belief our philosophical outlook largely depends.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Analysis of Mind
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
HENRI POINCARé
Of Science and Hypotheses
If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the believing-muscles of your mind, and then you'll be so weak you won't be able to believe the simplest true things.
LEWIS CARROLL
attributed, Lewis Carroll in Wonderland: The Life and Times of Alice and Her Creator
A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Never underestimate the power of the human mind to believe what it wants to believe, no matter the conflicting evidence.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
There is a force that controls all your decisions. It influences how you think and feel every moment you're alive. It determines what you will do and what you will not do. It determines how you feel about anything that occurs in your life. That force is your beliefs.
ANTHONY ROBBINS
Notes from a Friend: A Quick and Simple Guide to Taking Control of Your Life
It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Neverÿon
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which habitually acts.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those “truths” we once believed.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"Truth Will Have No Other Gods Alongside It"
Though my sight be lost, I do not yet lose my faith: when I can no longer see, I can still believe.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts