Belief Is Quotes & Sayings

The word of God is full of assurance. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual. — Margaret Mead

I don't think the amount of belief you have is what's important. I think it's what you have belief in that matters. — P.C. Cast

We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, "We worship God through Christ!" Believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped. — Tertullian

We live through the belief of children ... Regicide is suicide, citizens. Inscribe that in your hearts. The Great Pretend is a fragile construct. — Bill Willingham

I, Master John Hus, in chains and in prison, now standing on the shore of this present life and expecting on the morrow a dreadful death, which will, I hope, purge away my sins, find no heresy in myself, and accept with all my heart any truth whatsoever that is worthy of belief. — Jan Hus

The Egyptians have always been deeply impressed by the fact of human mortality, and much of their religious belief and religious ritual is taken up with the rites of burial, and detailed doctrines as to the experience of the soul after parting from the body. — Anonymous

Religion is a complex and often contradictory force in our world. It fosters hope and comfort but also doubt and guilt. It creates both community and exclusion. It brings societies together around shared belief and tears them apart through war. However, what unites the faithful, whatever their religion, is the unshakeable force of generosity. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

The only thing I have room for in this head of mine right now is the firm belief that fate absolutely exists. Fate ... soul mates ... time travel ... you name it. It all exists. Because that's what her kiss feels like. Existence. — Colleen Hoover

Waiting is a sustained effort to stay focused on God through prayer and belief. — Max Lucado

Indeed, there are recurrent hints in the Bible that the Israelites had feelings of guilt about taking the Canaanites' land,147 a curious adumbration of Israeli twinges about homeless Palestinian Arabs in the late twentieth century. The Israelites, however, hid any remorse in the belief that the conquest was a pious act: it is 'because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you'. — Paul Johnson

We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own. — Miri Ben-Ari

Pandeism: This is the belief that God created the universe, is now one with it, and so, is no longer a separate conscious entity. This is a combination of pantheism (God is identical to the universe) and deism (God created the universe and then withdrew Himself). — Alan Dawe

All belief is a cover-up for insecurity — Deepak Chopra

All day long because it's what you've been trained to do. But if, in your heart, you believe that the pain you're feeling is real and if you believe it's connected to some underlying condition, it is unlikely that the pain or the spirit will leave. Demons are more sensitive to what you think than what you say. Your belief in the legitimacy of the symptoms plays into the agenda of the evil spirit and what you believe can allow it to remain there. What we believe about the afflicting spirit can either empower it or remove its power over us. The degree to which any spirit can influence us is determined by how much we believe what it says. — Praying Medic

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world. — Ada Louise Huxtable

Human knowledge as it actually is and can only ever be is not a revelation of something objectively and timelessly true, an assured grasp of something existing 'out there' independently of ourselves. It is what we have the best grounds at any given time for believing. Because this is what it is, it does indeed provide the best possible basis for our suppositions and actions. But it always remains our belief, our, conjecture, our hypothesis, our theory; and as such, fallible - and also, as such, a creation of the human mind. — Bryan Magee

I knew I was in love with Lorri when I started to wake up in the middle of the night furious and cursing her for making me feel the way she did. It was pain beyond belief. Nothing has ever hurt me that way. I tried to sleep as much as possible just to escape. I was grinding my teeth down to nubs. Now, years later, it's exactly the opposite. Now there is no pain, yet she still makes my heart explode. Now there is only fun and love and silliness. She drives me to frenzy, because I can never get enough. — Damien Echols

Any positive thinker is compelled to see everything in the light of his own convictions. — Antoinette Brown Blackwell

'Truth Will Set U Free' is about honesty. My philosophic belief that ultimately being true to yourself is liberating, with every individual's inalienable right to be who they are without fear or recrimination. — Corey Hart

I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true. — Richard Dawkins

No one should be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of his life where he is consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? ... How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him? — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all. — Peter Singer

Life is spiritual warfare. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I am convinced that being fully committed to the moment, without any worries about the past or projections into the future, is the best attribute a closer can have. You wonder why the shelf life of so many short relievers is, well, so short? Why guys can be unhittable for a year or two and then disappear? It's because it takes a ton of concentration, and self-belief, to stay in the moment in this way and not let the highs and lows mess with your psyche. — Mariano Rivera

[On Werner Erhard, founder of est:] If I wanted a new belief system, I'd choose to believe in God - He's been in business longer than Werner, and He has better music. — Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. — Bertrand Russell

To benefit by others' killing and to delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religions and nonviolent is sheer self-deception. — Mahatma Gandhi

To achieve peace, destruction is delivered. To give the gift of freedom, one promises eternal imprisonment. Adjudication obviates the need for justice. This is a studied, deliberate embrace of diametric opposition. It is a belief in balance, a belief asserted with the conviction of religion. But in this case, the proof of a god's power lies not in the cause but in the effect. Accordingly, in this world and in all others, proof is achieved by action, and therefore all action - including the act of choosing inaction - is inherently moral. No deed stands outside the moral context. At the same time, the most morally perfect act is the one taken in opposition to what has occurred before. — Steven Erikson

It is desire that engenders belief; if we fail as a rule to take this into account, it is because most of the desires that create beliefs end only with out own life. — Marcel Proust

The claim that science can disprove God's existence is an honest ambition but it is a statement that is actually impossible to back up. This is because the task of proving something like science is unprovable by scientific methods. How do you prove an idea like "science"? What container do you use to measure it? What laws of science do you use to prove science? That's the first reason why the worldview of scientism, the belief that science proves everything, fails to work out in real life. Science cannot prove everything because it cannot even prove itself. — Jon Morrison

Life goes on. It doesn't go on. Yes, yes, I know, all we want in the end, we living, breathing creatures (am I still one of them?) is life. All we want to believe in is the persistence and vitality of life. Faced with the choice between death and the merest hint of life, what scrap, what token wouldn't we cling to in order to keep that belief? A leaf? A single moist, green leaf? That will do, that will be enough. — Graham Swift

Repentance is belief in action. — J.D. Greear

The core of all religions is a belief in a supreme personal god. — Frank Tipler

The period is one of the most complicated and concepts of classical rhetoric. Nobody in the ancient world could quite decide what it meant, but they were united in the belief that it was terribly, terribly important. — Mark Forsyth

Nurses on transplant wards often remarked that male transplant patients show renewed interest in sex. One reported that a patient asked her to wear something other than "that shapeless scrub" so he could see her breasts. A post-op who had been impotent for seven years before the operation was found holding his penis and demonstrating an erection. Another nurse spoke of a man who left the fly of his pajamas unfastened to show her his penis. Conclude Tabler and Frierson, "this irrational but common belief that the recipient will somehow develop characteristics of the donor is generally transitory but may alter sexual patterns.' Let us hope that the man with the chicken heart was blessed with a patient and open-minded spouse. — Mary Roach

It is my belief that God sends the solution first and the problem later. — Malala Yousafzai

Belief is as necessary to the soul as pleasures are necessary to the body. — Elsa Schiaparelli

(F)or it was the belief of the duchy that no nation can be governed well unless there is a majority which can impose its will upon a minority. A complete balance of pros and antis could produce nothing but deadlock. — Leonard Wibberley

If thou wouldest enjoy the eminent grace of the full assurance of faith, under the blessed Spirit's influence, and assistance, do what the Scripture tells thee, "Give diligence." Take care that thy faith is of the right kind--that it is not a mere belief of doctrine, but a simple faith, depending on Christ, and on Christ alone. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Don't be afraid of your fears. They're not there to scare you. They're there to let you know that something is worth it. — C. JoyBell C.

I strongly believe that success is directly proprotional to one's ability to be simple and comfortable. In fact, simplicity and comfort have a multiplication effect, thus increasing the chances of expedited and sustained success. — Vishwas Chavan

Religion, it seems to me, has nothing whatsoever to do with any belief, with any priest, with any church or so-called sacred book. The state of the religious mind can be understood only when we begin to understand what beauty is; and the understanding of beauty must be approached through total aloneness. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The cowardly belief that a person must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude and yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness. There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the non-existent horizon, and her empire is an intangible one, for her domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit. — Isabelle Eberhardt

A belief is only a thought you continue to think. A belief is nothing more than a chronic pattern of thought, and you have the ability - if you try even a little bit - to begin a new pattern, to tell a new story, to achieve a different vibration, to change your point of attraction. — Esther Hicks

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. — Terry Tempest Williams

We like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic. — John Stossel

I have this firm belief that I am who I am for a reason. If I change something, I'm cheating myself of whatever it is I'm supposed to learn from my body. You know, I'm legally blind. I'm 20/750, since I was in fifth grade. I wear glasses and contacts. But I won't even get LASIK. — Carrie Ann Inaba

It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselves and our globe, lest the consequences of the belief be unwelcome or discreditable to us. Could anything show more clearly the bad effects of wish-thinking? There can be no serious ethical position based on denial or a refusal to look the facts squarely in the face. But this does not mean that we must stare into the abyss all the time. (Only religion, oddly enough, has ever required that we obsessively do that.) — Christopher Hitchens

INFINITY is an illusion, we are just too lazy to count... — Andy Flynn

The military infrastructure grew me. My faith in God is important, my belief in my country is important, my relationship to my family is important, the things that Mom and Dad tell you growing up are important. — Tommy Franks

"You ought to be ashamed," a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. "Your race gave us our religion ... " "From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods," the woman continued a little more eruditely, "the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one." "Which is just a step from the truth," said Stein. — Peter De Vries

Mistrust is the fuel for so much mental pain, so many mental disorders. I am not talking here about the suspicions we sometimes have of one another, the distant but lurking sense that perhaps our lover lies to us, our best friend whispers behind our back. I am talking about a belief that betrayal inundates the atoms of the universe, is so woven into the workings of the world that every step is treacherous, and that below the rich mud lies a mine. — Lauren Slater

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality. — Alan Kay

Because we are not powerless biochemical machines, popping a pill every time we are mentally or physically out of tune is not the answer. Drugs and surgery are powerful tools when they are not overused, but the notion of simple drug fixes is fundamentally flawed. Every time a drug is introduced into the body to correct function A, it inevitably throws off function B, C, or D. It is not gene-directed hormones and neurotransmitters that control our bodies and our minds; our beliefs control our bodies, our minds, and thus our lives ... Oh ye of little belief! — Bruce H. Lipton

Preparatory faith is formed by experiences in the past-by the known, which provides a basis for belief. But redemptive faith must often be exercised toward experiences in the future-the unknown, which provides an opportunity for the miraculous. — Jeffrey R. Holland

When I talk to audiences about the size and age of the cosmos, people often say, "It makes me feel so insignificant." I answer, "The bigger and more impersonal the universe is, the more meaningful you are, because this vast, impersonal place needs something significant to fill it up." We've abandoned the old belief that humanity is at the physical center of the universe but more come back to believing we are at the center of meaning. — Alan Dressler

The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built. — Niklaus Wirth

I am constantly asked: What can you, with your cold rationalism, offer to the seeker after salvation that is comparable to the cozy homelike comfort of a fenced-in dogmatic creed? To this the answer is many-sided.
First, I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained by the abdication of reason. I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained from drink or drugs or amassing great wealth by swindling widows and orphans. It is not the happiness of the individual convert that concerns me; it is the happiness of mankind. If you genuinely desire the happiness of mankind, certain forms of ignoble personal happiness are not open to you. If your child is ill, and you are a conscientious parent, you accept medical diagnosis, however doubtful and discouraging; if you accept the cheerful opinion of a quack and your child consequently dies, you are not excused by the pleasantness of belief in the quack while it lasted. — Bertrand Russell

Prayer is not a monologue. It speaks to God and to the community. In the last analysis, religion is not what goes on inside a soul. It is what goes on in the world, between people, between us and God. To trap faith in a monologue, and pretend that it resides solely inside the self, undermines the true interchange of all belief. — David Wolpe

At the heart of most antagonisms are irreconcilable similarities. Hundred-year wars were fought over whether Jesus was human in divine form or divine in human form. Belief is murderous. After — Rabih Alameddine

God resides most strongly and evidently where science has not yet progressed to go ... And if this is true then it follows that God resides everywhere and in everything. — Terryl L. Givens

The myth stems from the belief that writing is some mystical process. That it's magical. That it abides by its own set of rules different from all other forms of work, art, or play.But that's bullshit. Plumbers don't get plumber's block. Teachers don't get teacher's block. Soccer players don't get soccer block. What makes writing different? Nothing. The only difference is that writers feel they have a free pass to give up when writing is hard. — Patrick Rothfuss

It is the belief in duty that captures her spirit best. Yet it is not duty in an arid or formal sense; she enjoyed life, lived it and loved it to the full. 'She loved her country and in turn it loved her.' The — Colin Burgess

Your belief without logical evidence & true knowledge is nothing but primitive superstition. — Md. Mujib Ullah

To love anyone is to risk. — Stephanie Morrill

You need to identify the values that come out of that kind of belief system, because I don't see them. All the polls I look at say, for example, that adultery is committed as much in the Bible Belt as in any other part of the country. The same goes for abortion, child abuse, spouse abuse or murder. — John Shelby Spong

A private man has always the liberty (because thought is free) to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles, according as he shall see what benefits can accrue by men's belief, to those that pretend, or countenance them, and thereby conjecture whether they be miracles or lies. — Thomas Hobbes

This concept that you refer to in Buddhism is something I've been nurtured with through the history of my country for 700, 800 years - Persian poets and philosophers haven't said anything different with regard to experiencing life in the moment, as opposed to the belief of permanence. — Abbas Kiarostami

Among other things a marriage is a system of belief, a story, and though it manifests itself in things that are real enough, the impulse that drives it is ultimately mysterious. — Rachel Cusk

No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution. — Alice Hegan Rice

Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary. — David Sylvian

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. — Sam Harris

Governments ... should not force and govern belief, which is a matter for the heart and conscience not for temporal authorities. — Katharina Zell

As I reject the old time beliefs, it is not a matter of countering belief with belief, rather I can challenge the efficacy of old beliefs with sound arguments. We believe in nature and that human progress depends on the domination of man over nature. There is no conscious power behind it. This is our philosophy. — Bhagat Singh

Contrary to popular belief, we do not face a choice between economy and ecology, It is often said that protecting the environment would constrain or even undermine economic growth. In fact, the opposite is true: unless we protect resources and the earth's natural capital, we shall not be able to sustain economic growth. — Kofi Annan

The most important quality of an inept person is to rely on popular belief and hearsay. — Marie De Gournay

Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner. — Aldous Huxley

It is almost inevitable that our faith will be challenged. We may at times find ourselves surrounded by others and yet standing in the minority or even standing alone concerning what is acceptable and what is not. Do we have the moral courage to stand firm for our beliefs, even if by so doing we must stand alone? — Thomas S. Monson

This is why I say that the individual's most potent weapon is a stubborn belief in the triumph of common decency. — Paul Rusesabagina

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions. — Nathaniel Branden

Loving is half of believing. — Victor Hugo

Mr. J.S. Mill speaks, in his celebrated work, "Utilitarianism," of the social feelings as a "powerful natural sentiment," and as "the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality," but on the previous page he says, "if, as is my own belief, the moral feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for that reason less natural." It is with hesitation that I venture to differ from so profound a thinker, but it can hardly be disputed that the social feelings are instinctive or innate in the lower animals; and why should they not be so in man? — Charles Darwin

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. — Epicurus

By 1998, members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, an elite elected group sponsored by the federal government, were approaching complete atheism. Only 10 percent testified to a belief in either God or immortality. Among them were a scant 2 percent of the biologists. In modern civilizations, there is no overwhelming importance in the general populace to belong to an organized religion. Witness, — Edward O. Wilson

My technique is don't believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite. — Terence McKenna

Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us - grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another. * * * P — Susan Sontag

I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself. — Christopher Hitchens

The most potent tool in maintaining the status quo is our belief that change is impossible. — Russell Brand

Belief is an odd thing for a defense counsel, Tommy. It is not necessary to believe in your client to defend him. Some would say that it is easier to not truly have an opinion, that the maneuverings of the law are only clouded by the emotions of trust and honesty. But — John Katzenbach

The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence - the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day - the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you've got something worth saying. — Jennifer Weiner

Fear is a belief - beliefs can be changed. — Abraham Low

Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body ... Someone who accepts - as I myself do, taking it on trust - the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Have faith that when bad things happen to you, I belief in an after life, it is better to suffer here on Earth than what awaits you. That is why I pray for pain, and I get it. I do. — Peter Steele

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. — Thomas Paine

You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude. — Idries Shah

Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality — Michel De Montaigne

That's what belief does, Sylvie. Whether something is true or not is beside the point. — John Searles

Part of Christian belief is to find out what's true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture. — N. T. Wright

The aim of this book is not to make atheism a popular belief or even to overcome its invisibility. My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons for being an atheist. ... My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not. I am quite aware that atheistic beliefs are not always based on reason. My claim is that they should be. — Michael Martin