quotations about belief
If you only believe when it's easy, you don't really believe.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
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Obsidian Butterfly
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
HENRI POINCARé
Of Science and Hypotheses
Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
RAY BRADBURY
The October Country
Men that believe only what they understand can write their creed on a postage stamp.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Belief is the way
The way of the innocent
And when I say innocent
I should say naive
DEPECHE MODE
"Lie to Me"
The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
If we can once believe that success is possible, success becomes possible.
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP
Success: A Course in Moral Instruction
A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence.
DAVID HUME
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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
So easy are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
We are trained to believe and not to know.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
Creeds, like other goods, pass by inheritance to descendants.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.
LIN YUTANG
The Importance of Living
The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD
The Ethics of Belief
Maturity of mind is best shown in slow belief.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
If what we worship fail us, still the fire
Burns on, and it is much to have believed.
AMY LOWELL
"Hero-Worship"
I've caught belief like a disease. I've fallen into belief like I fell in love.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
Beliefs. Once entrenched in a culture, they persist, evolve and diverge, in a manner reminiscent of biological evolution.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion