Quotes on Belief

We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate.

I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.

Contrary to popular belief, we do not face a choice between economy and ecology, It is often said that protecting the environment would constrain or even undermine economic growth. In fact, the opposite is true: unless we protect resources and the earth's natural capital, we shall not be able to sustain economic growth.

Going around this country, I have found a great hunger in America for spiritual revival; for a belief that law must be based on a higher law; for a return to traditions and values that we once had. Our government, in its most sacred documents - the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and all - speak of man being created, of a Creator; that we're a nation under God.

If a sect does officially insist that its structure of belief demands that evolution be false, then no compromise is possible. An honest and competent biology teacher can only conclude that the sect's beliefs are wrong and that its religion is a false one.

I also learned that a person was not necessarily bad just because you did not agree with him, and that if you believed in something, you had better be prepared to defend it.

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.

Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis.

Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident. . . . Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of the reader's trust. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and in what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold.

Our beliefs do not sit passively in our brains waiting to be confirmed or contradicted by incoming information. Instead, they play a key role in shaping how we see the world.

When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.

Being a Christian is more like having your soul possessed by a spirit than having your mind clothed with new beliefs... It is like being haunted by the Holy Ghost.

Listening to people espouse beliefs different from mine is informative, not threatening, because the only thing that can alter my worldview is a new and undeniable truth, and contrary to what Jack Nicholson says in 'A Few Good Men', "I CAN handle the truth.

A belief in feminism is a belief in personal freedom - the freedom to live a life free of fear of violence, to select a fulfilling career and be compensated fairly, to choose when to start a family, to marry whom you love. I want everyone, regardless of gender, to live a life free of restriction or fear, able to pursue their own personal brand of happiness and fulfillment.

RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.

When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first time you are able to see things as they are - not as you would like them to be. And when you are capable of knowing the facts of life, you become capable of knowing the truth. The facility of life is the first step towards truth. And ego is the most falsifying agent.

A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.

As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.

Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.

Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.