quotations about belief
The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Moral Equivalent of War
Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
Maturity of mind is best shown in slow belief.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Belief is the way
The way of the innocent
And when I say innocent
I should say naive
DEPECHE MODE
"Lie to Me"
The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
LIN YUTANG
The Importance of Living
It will be whatever it is, no? Nothing, something -- our believing one thing or another will matter not at all in the end.
SCOTT SMITH
The Ruins
We are trained to believe and not to know.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
The only thing wrong with love and faith and belief is not having it.
MARK SCHWAHN
"What Comes After the Blues", One Tree Hill
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Androcles and the Lion
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
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish,", Unpopular Essays
A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence.
DAVID HUME
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
If you want to know what your true beliefs are, take a look at your actions.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Think Big
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's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary... but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything any more if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.
STEVE MARTIN
A Wild and Crazy Guy
Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Celtic Twilight
Human beings believe just as they breathe -- in order to survive.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
To learn a belief without belief is to sing a song without the tune.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Telling