Belief

"What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?"

"Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for—because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."

"Belief is a beautiful armor, but makes for the heaviest sword; like punching underwater, you never can hit who you're trying for."

"The long duration of a belief, he thought, is at least proof of an adaption in it to some portion or other of the human mind; and if, on digging down to the root, we do not find, as is generally the case, some truth, we shall find some natural want or requirement of human nature which the doctrine in question is fitted to satisfy: among which wants the instincts of selfishness and of credulity have a place, but by no means an exclusive one."

"A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy."

"You will not enter Paradise until you believe and you will not believe until you love each other. Shall I show you something that, if you did, you would love each other? Spread peace among yourselves.”"

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know."

"We believe, because we love."

"Consciously or unconsciously, the strategy of true believers is to isolate themselves from skeptics."

"Incrédules les plus crédules. Ils croient les miracles de Vespasien, pour ne pas croire ceux de Mose."

"I firmly believe that everyone should be free to pursue their desires as long as it does not harm others or society."

"I believe that the human being is the most complicated chapter of existence, with thousands of dimensions."

"The simple believes everything, But the prudent man carefully considers his ways."

"Seeing is beleeving."

"And be not weak-hearted, nor grieve, and you will have the upper hand if you are believers. If a wound has afflicted you, a wound like it has also afflicted the (disbelieving) people. And We bring these days to men by turns, that Allah may know those who believe and take witnesses from among you. And Allah loves not the wrongdoers, And that He may purge those who believe and deprive the disbelievers of blessings. Do you think that you will enter the Garden while Allah has nor yet known those from among you who strive hard (nor) known the steadfast? And certainly you desired death before you met it. So indeed you have seen it now while you look (at it)."

"Believe as hard as you want to. But convincing yourself however firmly still can’t change the reality of things. Seeing is believing. But seeing isn’t knowing. Believing isn’t knowing. Subjective convictions are meaningless in science, and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence."

"Believe it or not"

"If you believe in the sinfulness of the world, for instance, then you will search out from normal sense data those facts that confirm your belief. But beyond that, at other levels you also organize your mental world in such a way that attracts to yourself events that - again - will confirm your beliefs."

"To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched. To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do any thing that is worth the doing."

"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."

"Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs."

"Ecosystems majorly shape culture — but then that culture can be exported and persist in radically different places for millennia. Stated most straightforwardly, most of earth’s humans have inherited their beliefs about the nature of birth and death and everything in between and thereafter from preliterate Middle Eastern pastoralists."

"Now God be praised, that to believing souls, Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!"

"Stands not within the prospect of belief."

"One feels weak only when they believe someone will offer support."

"A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often."

"I believe this with all my heart. But not even my sincerest belief, I fear, is sufficient to make it true."

"In religious delusion, eternity and infinity have come within and are under the person’s control. This is unlike the experience with non-psychotic religious beliefs, which are spiritual or metaphorical, usually discussed with others with thoughtful reticence and acknowledgment of our human limitations, and sometimes are held with doubts or at least understanding that others may have doubts."

"For the heart, it needs to believe."

"Take you up when you feeling down When you're sick he will come around Takes his cures from out the ground He's the one who can hypnotize And you'll never believe your eyes He can cause the dead to rise."

"One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world."

"Know how to rank beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause."

"It is very difficult to reason people out of beliefs that they didn’t reason themselves into."

"Only those who doubt really believe, and those who do not doubt are neither tempted against their faith nor do they truly believe."

"We live in a twisted world, where right is wrong and wrong reigns supreme. It is a chilling fact that most of the world's leaders believe in nonsensical fairytales about the nature of reality. They believe in Gods that do not exist, and religions that could not possibly be true. We are driven to war after war, violence on top of violence to appease madmen who believe in gory mythologies. These men are called Christians, Muslims and Jews."

"[[Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else."

"It is no coincidence that so many religious beliefs date back to times when no science could possibly have accounted satisfactorily for many of the natural phenomena inspiring scripture and myths."

"Truth's one reward, belief!"

"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."

"I once had an understanding that everything would go my way But now we’ve come too far along for me to hold on to my own beliefs."

"I don't actually have anything against anybody, unless their belief precludes everybody else's. … I am an atheist and an absurdist and I have been for many years. I've actually taken a huge amount of flack for that."

"Someone who is determined to disbelieve something can manage to disregard an Everest of evidence for it."

"I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them."

"Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence."

"There littleness was not; the least of things Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped Her prospects, nor did he believe,—He saw."

"One solace yet remains for us who came Into this world in days when story lacked Severe research, that in our hearts we know How, for exciting youth's heroic flame, Assent is power, belief the soul of fact."

"I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine; enquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the ground of your opinions, the for and the against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you. ... But your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry — tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors. By their own creed you hold your reason from their God. Go! ask them why he gave it."

"The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen."

"What ardently we wish, we soon believe."

"Fere libenter homines id, quod volunt, credunt."