belief quotes

Adlai E. Stevenson: 

What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand. 
speech, Libertyville, Illinois, May 21, 1954


Alfred Korzybski: 

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

Anatole France: 

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Andre Gide: 

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Anne Frank: 

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.

Bertrand Russell: 

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Buddha: 

Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true. [paraphrased]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine.

D. H. Lawrence: 

The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.

Demosthenes: 

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Edith Hamilton: 

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

Frank Lloyd Wright: 

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

G. K. Chesterton: 

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

George Orwell: 

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

Hannah Senesh: 

One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.

Harry Emerson Fosdick: 

Nothing else matters much -- not wealth, nor learning, nor even health -- without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.

Isaiah Berlin: 

Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

Johann Goethe: 

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of douts of my own.

John Burroughs : 

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

John Lovejoy Elliott: 

I have known many good people who did not believe in God. But I have never known a human being who was good who did not believe in people. [language slightly modified]

Mark Twain: 

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. 
Autobiography, 1959


Michael Korda: 

To succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Pearl S. Buck: 

I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.

Pearl S. Buck: 

When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.

Philip K. Dick: 

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

Robert Fulghum: 

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Rudyard Kipling: 

I always try to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble.

Sophia Lyon Fahs: 

Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage
exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged. 
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and
deeper sympathies. 

This entry continued ...
Sydney J. Harris: 

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

Thomas Jefferson: 

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

Thomas Jefferson: 

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: 

All ... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

Voltaire: 

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

William Robertson Smith: 

Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of the true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods.