Quotes on Belief

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.

Children demand that their heroes should be freckle less, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.

The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony.

Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.

Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful.

I just have this absolute belief that humans are moving away from cruelty and destruction towards a time when we can truly live in harmony with nature. When we understand that there is a spiritual power around us from which we can draw strength. That is where I believe human destiny ultimately is taking us. I just hope we have time.

Science reserves the highest reward for those of you who disprove our most cherished beliefs. At any moment someone from any walk of life could come forward and be responsible for a complete revision of our view of everything.

In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining...I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.

A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.

Any attempt at understanding humanity must include an explanation of the hold that supernatural belief continues to have on most of the human race.

It has been convincingly demonstrated that countries where there are high rates of poverty, or high rates of economic inequality, are the countries with the highest rates of religious beliefs.

I great difficulty having any respect for a religion that has so little confidence in the truth of its beliefs that it feels reduced to using threats in order to propagate those beliefs.

Religion is the human attitude towards a sacred order that includes within it all being-human or otherwise-i.e., belief in a cosmos, the meaning of which both includes and transcends man.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.

Belief is not the beginning of knowledge - it is the end.

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.