Quotes about Belief

There is a special beauty in the life view of people who we call mentally retarded. They see things simply and there is beauty in that simplicity. The Lord gives everyone gifts. They are a gift to us because they remind us of how beautiful the world could be if everyone believed that others told the truth and acted upon those beliefs.

Credo is the word with which the great creeds of early Chistendom begin.  “I believe. . .” we say.  The Latin credo means literally, “I give my heart.”  The word believe is a problematic one today in part because it has gradually changed its meaning from being the language of certainty so deep that I could give my heart to it, to the language of uncertainty so shallow that only the “credulous” would rely on it.  Faith, as we have seen, is not about propositions, but about commitment.  It does not mean that I intellectually subscribe to the following list of statements, but that I give my heart to this reality.  Believe, indeed, comes to us from the Old English belove, making clear that this too is meant to be heart language.  To say “I believe in Jesus Christ” is not to subscribe to an uncertain proposition.  It is a confession of commitment, of love.

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

What matters most is how you see yourself.

I would rather make a leap of faith than a jump to conclusion.

Love is about giving someone the power to break your heart but trusting them not to

Many people will come in and out of your life that will cause you pain, it is your choice to let them continue

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true

Love your haters, they are you biggest fans

One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendants asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth." "Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of the truth, O evil one?" his attendants asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this they usually make a belief out of it."

The rigidity of one's religious beliefs diminishes with the presence of faith.  Fanatacism is a grasping for order in a mind without peace and without faith.

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, whene we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, whene we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield

The "public" seems to have bought into this belief that life can, and should, be run without risk, that all accidents are avoidable, and that death is something that only happens to people who eat meat and smoke.

I have no proof for any proof.

"If you really believe something, you will act in accordance with that belief -- always. If you believe in gravity, you will never attempt to defy it. If you claim to hold a belief but act incongruently, then you don't actually believe it. You're only kidding yourself. Casual faith isn't."

If I have the belief that I can do it, I surely shall aquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.

Everything that humans want or desire or hope for, every kind of external fetish no matter how remote or minor that they may premise some key part of their happiness upon, is a nerve that can be tweaked, a fear that can be toyed with -- even by oneself. Most of the "present" in human life is really subjective projections of a kind of future that one needs to believe in, in order to stave off despair or futility or disillusionment, etc. We live most of our lives in an unwitting subjunctive mood, in the unrecognized modulation from actualities into the possibilities of an always-intoxicating wish-world.

How many students who make it into the liberal arts and into philosophy classes still only manage to comprehend the content of these courses dogmatically, as simplisms to "believe"? Instead of grasping principles and values and an aristic ethos of clarity, they still only hear what pleases and flatters them: they grasp in Socrates or Plato the "countercultural" overtones that enable them to shower abuse on the diseased culture of their parents or peers, but they don't grasp at all the overwhelming obligation for themselves not to lie in orthodoxy's bed of sloth. They substitute, as opinionizers and slaves will do, one orthodoxy for another, imagining that the processes of "enlightenment" will change only the matter they think about and not the form of their own activity in reasoning. 

Scientists don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don’t believe it has any negative impact on people’s lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It’s like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it’s probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It’s an aesthetic thing.

Tolerance is a good cornerstone on which to build human relationships. When one
views the slaughter and suffering caused by religious intolerance throughout all
the history of man and into modern times, one can see that intolerance is a very
nonsurvival activity. Religious tolerance does not mean one cannot express his
own beliefs. It does mean that seeking to undermine or attack the religious
faith and beliefs of another has always been a short road to trouble .

To trust in the force
that moves the universe is faith
Faith isn't blind, it's visionary.
Faith is believing that the universe
is on our side, and that the universe
knows what it's doing.

Agnosticism simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that for which he has no grounds for professing to believe.

The sages say . . .

Experience is stronger than belief. What you were taught when you were a young child might be true or not.

When you experience, then you know.