quotations about belief
Belief as a positive phenomenon, if it exists, may be regarded, in this view, as a product of doubt, a decision after debate, an acceptance, not merely of THIS, but of THIS-RATHER-THAN-THAT.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Analysis of Mind
The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Celtic Twilight
There are people who can believe anything they wish. What lucky creatures!
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
The Reflections of Lichtenberg
Belief is something you choose to do. It's hard. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth as much.
MEL ODOM
Unnatural Selection
It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary... but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything any more if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.
STEVE MARTIN
A Wild and Crazy Guy
Belief in God does not rest upon a mere doctrine of logic, which some other statement of logic may come and upset. It is one of those primal facts in the human soul which no mere logic has established nor can refute.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system.
GEORGE ELIOT
Silas Marner
I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish,", Unpopular Essays
It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith ... it fixes you.
JOSS WHEDON
"Jaynestown", Firefly
Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
RICHARD FEYNMAN
The Meaning of It All
A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
FRANZ KAFKA
attributed, Memorable Quotations
He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
BBC radio debate on the existence of God, "Russell vs. Copleston,", 1948
If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education". This last is particularly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in greater or less degree in the schools of every civilised country.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Human Society in Ethics and Politics
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Notebooks
He who believes needs no explanation.
EURIPIDES
Bacchæ
It was not right to believe anything you couldn't see or hold in your hands or test with your teeth.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
The less depth a belief system has, the greater the fervency with which its adherents embrace it. The most vociferous, the most fanatical are those whose cobbled faith is founded on the shakiest grounds.
DEAN KOONTZ
Forever Odd
All religious beliefs seem weird to those not brought up in them.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion