To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Samuel ButlerRead
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Belief, much like physical motion, tends to take the easiest route.
This quote suggests that our beliefs are shaped by the path of least resistance, meaning that we often adopt ideas and viewpoints that are the easiest to accept or align with, rather than critically examining them. It highlights the tendency of human nature to avoid challenges and complexities, opting instead for comfort and simplicity in our thinking.
Themes
BeliefResistanceThoughtPhilosophyMindset
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech to encourage critical thinking and openness to new ideas.
More from Samuel Butler
All quotes βAcademic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel ButlerRead
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel ButlerRead
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
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A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Samuel ButlerRead
Similar quotes
There will never cease to be ferment in the world unless people are sure of their food.
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Everyone has to find what is right for them, and it is different for everyone. Eating for me is how you proclaim your beliefs three times a day. That is why all religions have rules about eating. Three times a day, I remind myself that I value life and do not want to cause pain to or kill other living beings. That is why I eat the way I do.
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An 'impersonal God'-well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads-better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap-best of all. But God himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, King, husband-that is quite another matter.
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The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.
M. Scott PeckRead
I'm the blackest member of my family. You know, these mixed families produce children of all colors, and in Jamaica, the question of exactly what shade you were, in colonial Jamaica, that was the most important question. Because you could read off class and education and status from that. I was aware and conscious of that from the very beginning.
Stuart HallRead
To become imperceptible oneself, to have dismantled love in order to become capable of loving. To have dismantled one's self in order finally to be alone and meet the true double at the other end of the line. A clandestine passenger on a motionless voyage. To become like everybody else; but this, precisely, is a becoming only for one who knows how to be nobody, to no longer be anybody. To paint oneself gray on gray.
Gilles DeleuzeRead