Quotes on Belief

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

One of the greatest features of science is that it doesn't matter where you were born, and it doesn't matter what the belief systems of your parents might have been: If you perform the same experiment that someone else did, at a different time and place, you'll get the same result.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now.

On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, 'What God do you pray to?' What beliefs do you hold?'

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?

It is ... a sign of the times-though our brothers of physics and chemistry may smile to hear me say so-that biology is now a science in which theories can be devised: theories which lead to predictions and predictions which sometimes turn out to be correct. These facts confirm me in a belief I hold most passionately-that biology is the heir of all the sciences.

Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.

A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.

The past history of human belief is a cautionary tale. We have killed thousands of our fellow human beings because we believed they had signed a contract with the devil, and had become witches. We still kill more than a thousand people each year for witchcraft. In my view, there is only one hope for humankind to emerge from what Carl Sagan called "the demon-haunted world" of our past. That hope is science.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

In Deism our reason and our belief are happily united.

I'm firmly of the belief that your youth should be spent pursuing your passion - not just slightly, tremulously, haltingly, but unrelentingly, with a vengeance, to the max and then beyond. So dream laughably big - and then take an absurdly huge risk or two.

Of one thing we can be certain: every person we see - no matter the race, religion, political beliefs, body type, or appearance - is family.

What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn't change what I decide to do. I don't choose projects so people don't see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system.

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.