Belief Quotes

Democracy is, first and foremost, a spiritual force, it is built upon a spiritual basis - And on a belief in God and an observance of moral principle. And in the long run only the church can provide that basis. Our founder knew this truth - And we will neglect it at our peril.

President Harry Truman, Public Papers of the President of the United States: Harry S. Truman - 1951 U. S. Gov. 1966 p1063

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul unbelief, in denying them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Natural History of Intellect (1893)

Many people have died for their beliefs? The real courage is living and suffering for what you believe.

Christopher Paolini, Author of Eragon and Eldest. Quote from Eragon.

Without cultural sanction, most or all our religious beliefs and rituals would fall into the domain of mental disturbance.

John Schumake

Do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.

Kent Nerburn

The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas - A trial of spiritual resolve the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.

Ronald Reagan

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

W. Somerset Maugham

Science... warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

Thomas Huxley

Love is the mistaken belief that one woman differs from another.

Henry Louis Mencken

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.

Bertrand Russell

Unless man is committed to the belief that all mankind are his brothers, then he labors in vain and hypocritically in the vineyards of equality.

Adam Clayton Jr. Powell

My belief is that to have no wants is divine.

Socrates

The tragic mistake of so many in the environmentalist movement is the belief that the rest of the world can afford to hold itself to our expensive green standards.

Jonathan Berry

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?

Carl Sagan

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

William James

Belief is the death of intelligence.

Robert Anton Wilson

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.

Max Born

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

George Carlin

My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.

Peggy Noonan

Contrary to popular belief, English women do not wear tweed nightgowns.

Hermione Gingold

Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.

Thomas Paine

God, I dont have great faith, but I can be faithful. My belief in you may be seasonal, but my faithfulness will not. I will follow in the way of Christ. I will act as though my life and the lives of others matter. I will love. I have no greater gift to offer than my life. Take it.

Real Live Preache

Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple - Minded...

Plato, _Phaedrus_

If the belief in Christianity did not make us happy, it would not be believed: how little it must then be worth!

Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human" page 87, #120.

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

W. Clement Stone

A belief is not true because it is useful.

Henri Frdric Amiel

Another belief of mine that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

Margaret Atwood

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

Frank Lloyd Wright

An atheist is one who hopes the Lord will do nothing to disturb his disbelief.

Franklin P. Jones

Toward no crime have men shown themselves so cold - Bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

James R. Lowell

The beginning of faith is the beginning of fruitfulness but the beginning of unbelief, however glittering, is empty.

Johann von Goethe

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

Oscar Wilde

America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.

Louis D. Brandeis

If you can not find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it Dogen Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul unbelief, denying them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas - A trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.

Ronald Reagan