quotations about belief
There is a class of people who, if they do not believe, must at least make a semblance of believing. This class, comprising all the tormentors, all the oppressors, and all the exploiters of humanity; priests, monarchs, statesmen, soldiers, public and private financiers, officials of all sorts, policemen, gendarmes, jailers and executioners, monopolists, capitalists, tax-leeches, contractors and landlords, lawyers, economists, politicians of all shades, down to the smallest vendor of sweetmeats, all will repeat in unison those words of Voltaire: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." For, you understand, the people must have a religion. That is the safety-valve.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
If you want to know what your true beliefs are, take a look at your actions.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Think Big
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
Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted to fact.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
Knowing what our beliefs are requires confronting ourselves, our fears, and our resistance to change. Once we know what our real beliefs are, we can allow them to evolve and change if they do not serve us.
PAT. B. ALLEN
Art Is a Way of Knowing
Many people have died for their beliefs. The real courage is living and suffering for what you believe.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Eragon
False beliefs can be every bit as consoling as true ones, right up until the moment of disillusionment.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
But I was commanded to believe; and yet it corresponded not with what had been established by calculations and my own sight.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
The less depth a belief system has, the greater the fervency with which its adherents embrace it. The most vociferous, the most fanatical are those whose cobbled faith is founded on the shakiest grounds.
DEAN KOONTZ
Forever Odd
I prefer to have some beliefs that don't make logical sense.
LOUISE ERDRICH
Love Medicine
Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system.
GEORGE ELIOT
Silas Marner
If we can once believe that success is possible, success becomes possible.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
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
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
The only thing wrong with love and faith and belief is not having it.
MARK SCHWAHN
"What Comes After the Blues", One Tree Hill
Beliefs are more powerful than facts.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
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