False Belief Quotes & Sayings

If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend. — Charlotte Bronte

One of the strangest things in life is the false ideas everywhere prevalent regarding the nature of happiness. The general belief seems to be that it is founded on things that can be bought with money. The more money the more things, and the more things the more enjoyment, the greater the degree of happiness. But money has never yet been known to buy happiness. No one has ever yet found happiness by chasing it over the earth. It is not in our food, it is not in our drink, it is not in our clothes or material possessions; it is not in excitement or a constant round of pleasure. Happiness is born of right living. It is the child of right thinking, and right acting, of helpful service. A selfish life never knows real happiness. Greed and envy never touch it. — Orison Swett Marden

Inside we are all Golden Buddha's, but we grew to believe we were made of clay. Our ego's false perceptions led us to grow into a belief system that covered our inner light. We've spent years, maybe decades, masking our truth. Now it's time to embrace our light and reconnect with our Golden Buddha within. — Gabrielle Bernstein

Harder still it has proved to rule the dragon Money ... A whole generation adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief they were enriching the country they were impoverishing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine, but has also hurt it in many ways, making it more impersonal, expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us, permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices, has undermined our spirit of self-reliance. — Andrew Weil

A true worshipper is one whose mind has not been defiled with any false belief. — Pope Leo I

Every problem emerges from the false belief we are separate from one another, and every answer emerges from the realization we are not. — Marianne Williamson

I believed I would never trust another person for as long as I lived. Yet, I couldn't help but trust him; the decision was made before I even realized what was happening. He forced my soul back into innocent belief, not by empty words or false promises but by consistent action that never failed. He was safe. — Rachel Higginson

A man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith ... to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture ... when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture ... either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt ... let us choose [the doctrine] which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author ... For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief. — Augustine Of Hippo

To accept life means to accept impermanence and emptiness of self. The source of suffering is a false belief in permanence and the existence of separate selves. Seeing this, one understands that there is neither birth nor death, production nor destruction, one nor many, inner nor outer, large nor small, impure nor pure. All such concepts are false distinctions created by the intellect. If one penetrates into the empty nature of all things, one will transcend all mental barriers, and be liberated from the cycle of suffering. — Thich Nhat Hanh

No one who is rightly minded turns from true belief to false. — Justin Martyr

In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong. — Carl Sagan

...a useful coorective to the triumphalism of some scientists. For example, Maddox went out of his way to emphasise the provisional nature of much physics - he referred to black holes as 'putative' only, to the search for theories of everything as 'the embodiment of a belief, even a hope' and stated that the reason why the quantum gravity project is 'becalmed' right now is because 'the problem to be solved is not yet fully understood' and that the idea that the universe began with a Big Bang 'will be found to be false'. — Peter Watson

Because our ladies mostly attend Kalatshepams, (Religious discourses) they have fallen prey to the superstitions, blind beliefs, and immorality by the false and fictituous propaganda of the Brahmins — Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

You may spend fifty or eighty years of your life believing in something totally false, and this is what happens to most people! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I should be impressed?' he commented finally. 'World renowned for foul works and mayhem, whether I practise such doctrine, or not? A shame. Shown such vulgar taste, what man with a mind would scarcely wallow to seek further clarity. Sweet faith, bliss, and bathos, it's an execrable drama. Never mind that the theological concepts are glorified platitudes sprung out of lies. — Janny Wurts

The statesman cannot govern without stability of belief, true or false. — George Bernard Shaw

Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs. — Ludwig Von Mises

Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of humanity, and they could not have done this without their belief in the absolute truth of these errors. Now if the belief in such truth generally diminishes, if the rainbow colors at the outermost ends of human knowing and imagining fade: then the species of art that, like the Divina commedia, Raphael's pictures, Michelangelo's frescoes, the Gothic cathedrals, presupposes not only a cosmic, but also a metaphysical significance for art objects can never blossom again. A touching tale will come of this, that there was once such an art, such belief by artists. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies, and in the end isn't that the real truth? The answer is no. No squared. The postmodernist belief in the — Michael Shermer

God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world. (In His Image, Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand, p. 40) — Philip Yancey

How treacherous history is! Half-truths, ignorance, deceptions, false trails, errors and lies, and buried somewhere in between all of that, the truth, in which it is easy to lose faith, of which it is consequently easy to say, it's a chimera, there's no such thing, everything is relative, one man's absolute belief is another man's fairy tale; but about which we insist, we insist most emphatically, that it is too important an idea to give up to the relativity merchants. — Salman Rushdie

Yet already their destruction begins. It comes upon them gradually, in little ways. Bit by bit their belief in themselves erodes. A growing cynicism pervades their lives. Small acts of kindness and charity are abandoned as pointless and somehow indicative of weakness. Little failures of behavior lead to bigger ones. It is not enough to ignore the discourtesies of others; discourtesies must be repaid in kind. Men are intolerant and judgmental. They are without grace. If one man proclaims that God has spoken to him, another quickly proclaims that his God is false. If the homeless cannot find shelter, then surely they are to blame for their condition. If the poor do not have jobs, then surely it is because they will not work. If sickness strikes down those whose lifestyle differs from our own, then surely they have brought it on themselves. — Terry Brooks

Prayer is essentially the practice of the presence of God, and that is the road to Heaven. There is no alternative. God is the only game in town. All other roads are dead ends. Since we must give our all to the one true God, we must not give any part to idols, to the many false gods that now bite away at our lives. — Peter Kreeft

I think that the only choice that we have in life is whether we align ourselves with God or not. I think everything else is all taken care of for us. You know? If you choose to align with your source, with your spirit, then your life will go in a certain direction. If you choose to align yourself with your ego, and your false self, and the belief that who you are is what you accomplish and what other people think of you and what you accumulate, if you just go that route - the outer route, if you will, the outer path - your life will go in a different direction. — Wayne Dyer

Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts — Henry Rosovsky

Unfortunately a religious group defines itself foremost by its creation story, the supernatural narrative that explains how humans came into existence. And this story is also the heart of tribalism. No matter how gentle and high-minded, or subtly explained, the core belief assures its members that God favors them above all others. It teaches that members of other religions worship the wrong gods, use wrong rituals, follow false prophets, and believe fantastic creation stories. There is no way around the soul-satisfying but cruel discrimination that organized religions by definition must practice among themselves. I doubt there ever has been an imam who suggested that his followers try Roman Catholicism or a priest who urged the reverse. — Edward O. Wilson

I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true ... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque. — Christopher Hitchens

...most of us build prisons for ourselves and after we occupy them for a period of time we become accustomed to their walls and accept the false premise that we are incarcerated for life. As soon as that belief takes hold of us we abandon hope of ever doing more with our lives and of ever giving our dreams a chance to be fulfilled. We become puppets and begin to suffer living deaths. It may be praiseworthy and noble to sacrifice your life to a cause or a business or the happiness of others, but if you are miserable and unfulfilled in that lifestyle, and know it, then to remain in it is a hypocrisy, a lie, and a rejection of the faith placed in you by your creator. — Og Mandino

Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. — Helen Shucman

In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false. — Austin Osman Spare

You have perhaps heard some false reports
On the subject of God. He is not dead; and he is not a fable. He is not mocked nor forgotten
Successfully. God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars
If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond them
Were that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears
And where is the German Reich? There also
Will be prodigious America and world-owning China. I say that all hopes and empires will die like yours;
Mankind will die, there will be no more fools; wisdom will die; the very stars will die;
One fierce life lasts. — Robinson Jeffers

Advertising doesn't cause addictions. But it does create a climate of denial and it contributes mightily to a belief in the quick fix, instant gratification, the dreamworld, and escape from all pain and boredom. All of this is part of what addicts believe and what we hope for when we reach for our particular substance ... Addiction begins with the hope that something "out there" can instantly fill up the emptiness inside. Advertising is all about this false hope. — Jean Kilbourne

Meditation is an insight that all goals are false. Meditation is an understanding that desires don't lead anywhere. Seeing that ... And this is not a belief that you can get from me or from Buddha or from Jesus. This is not knowledge; you will have to see it. You can see it right now! — Rajneesh

Perception is reality to the one in the experience. — Danielle Bernock

Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide. — William Kingdon Clifford

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

For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too; For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion, But is worthy some worship of mine; Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble, but open eyed. — Don Marquis

I am therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and great men, and would advise all travellers who travel for their gratification to be the same. What is it to us whether these stories be true or false, so long as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them and enjoy all the charm of the reality? — Washington Irving

Once, the belief that his love would heal all the wounds, and finally make me feel safe, had been true. True, and a lie. Love is real, and false, even true love. Because love alone cannot keep you safe, if there is still a trembling fear inside you. Still a knowledge of what it was like to love and believe and have it all taken away. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow. — John Betjeman

If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement. — Orson Scott Card

If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Better a wrong will than a wavering; better a steadfast enemy than an uncertain friend; better a false belief than no belief at all. — George Eliot

belief, by its very nature, is exclusive. If The earth is more than four billion years old is true, then the claim, The earth is fewer than ten thousand years old is false. And so my believing the truth of the former entails my also believing the falseness of the latter. — David Werther

Culture makes lies plausible through exposure to time. It makes prejudice seem like physics intergenerationally. It is therefore the most dangerous opponent of philosophy, because it feels the most credible to the average person. — Stefan Molyneux

There's something wrong in not appreciating one's own special abilities, my girl. Find your own limitations, yes, but don't limit yourself with false modesty. — Anne McCaffrey

Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies; belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them they could make themselves "right" and others "wrong" and thus define their identity through their enemies, the "others", the "nonbelievers" or "wrong believers" who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in the killing. — Eckhart Tolle

My point taken further is that True and False (hence what we call "belief") play a poor, secondary role in human decisions; it is the payoff from the True and the False that dominates-and it is almost always asymmetric, with one consequence much bigger than the other, i.e., harboring positive and negative asymmetries (fragile or antifragile). Let me explain. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists. — Blaise Pascal

I had great pity on Ansje, because she always acted very happy, but I believed that it was really a front. I could see through it. Inside she was crying because she was really very sad. You pity people like that
the ones who try to lie to themselves
because they suffer so much and don't face reality. — Diet Eman

The truth of who we are is innate goodness, and the whole journey is really about removing any obstacle or false belief that keeps us from knowing that — Alanis Morissette

When catering for your spiritual needs make sure that you authenticate the capacity and qualification of the person or people you allow access to your spiritual being. Being careless in this regard is as dangerous as allowing an untrained person to treat you or operate on you to address a medical condition. While the bush-doctor kills your body, the false spiritual leader will destroy body, soul and spirit. Therefore use your belief's spiritual standard, not a merely mental or intellectual standard, to get spiritual help. — Archibald Marwizi

Our minds have been poisoned and our accepted beliefs are unnatural and artificial. — Bryant McGill

So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy's needs but not their own? Like so many thinkers, Smith believed that people want just one thing - happiness - hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy.14 If and only if people hold this false belief will they do enough producing, procuring, and consuming to sustain their economies. — Daniel M. Gilbert

Here is a myth for you if myths are your pleasure: "There is no more opportunity in this world." Most people held this false belief fifty years ago, the majority agreed with it five years ago, and practically everyone clings to it today. Clearly, this myth will also be the screaming rage in the future. Hang on to this myth, and you are destined to miss great opportunities for the rest of your life. — Ernie J Zelinski

You expect two-year olds to wear diapers and make a mess with just about everything they touch. We have to allow the young in Christ to be immature, and yes, make messes. Young and immature prophetic people will act like young and immature prophetic people. The belief that some have tried to impose on the prophetic - that if you made one mistake you are a false prophet - inhibits their maturity, or worse, it can profoundly distort their character. — Rick Joyner

Trust is an illusion meant to wrap one in a false sense of belief, in that moment of realization will despair ultimately set in. — Lolah Runda

Disease is the misery of our belief, happiness is the health of our wisdom, so that man's happiness or misery depends on himself. Now, as our misery comes from our belief, and not from the thing believed, it is necessary to be on the watch, so as not to be deceived by false guides. Sensation contains no intelligence or belief, but is a mere disturbance of the matter, called agitation, which produces mind, and is ready to receive the seed of error. Ever since man was created, there has been an element called error which has been busy inventing answers for every sensation. — Phineas Quimby

People are given a false alternative: the choice between an unenlightened belief and an enlightened unbelief. Most intellectuals seem to pay homage to the second variant. — Eugen Drewermann

Humanism is an overemphasis on human worth and ability, leading man to glorify himself instead of God ... While its historical forms may vary, humanism inevitably leads people away from God and spiritual concerns. It promotes the false idea that man is good and that he is superior to God. Secular Humanism of the twentieth century altogether rejects belief in God and worships man as God. The pride of humanism will not go unpunished. — David Fisher

How miserable a solipsist is! It is rather senseless for him to even assert his belief in solipsism, for, on the one hand, if his belief is false it is like committing intellectual suicide, and, on the other hand, if his belief is true it is an act of intellectual insanity. — Kedar Joshi

The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Never before in history has such a sweeping fervor for freedom expressed itself in great mass movements which are driving down the bastions of empire. This wind of change blowing through Africa, as I have said before, is no ordinary wind. It is a raging hurricane against which the old order cannot stand [ ... ] The great millions of Africa, and of Asia, have grown impatient of being hewers of wood and drawers of water, and are rebelling against the false belief that providence created some to be menials of others. Hence the twentieth century has become the century of colonial emancipation, the century of continuing revolution which must finally witness the total liberation of Africa from colonial rule and imperialist exploitation. — Kwame Nkrumah

It is not people who are giving you the things you desire. If you
hold that false belief, you will experience lack, because you are
looking at the outside world and people as the supply. The true
supply is the invisible field, whether you call that the Universe, the
Supreme Mind, God, Infinite Intelligence, or whatever else. — Rhonda Byrne

Relationships become rocky when men and women fail to acknowledge they are biologically different and when each expects the other to live up to their expectations. Much of the stress we experience in relationships comes from the false belief that men and women are now the same and have the same priorities, drives and desires — Barbara Pease

If what was supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief. — Franz Kafka

It is better to be true to what you believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe, even if that belief is correct. — Anna Howard Shaw

These ancient laws also reflected a widespread suspicion that women accusing men of rape were lying--a belief system that is still operative today. Almost every time a star athlete or celebrity is accused of rape, for example, there's an inference that the charge is false, brought by a scorned, or vindictive, or drunk, or willing woman against an innocent man. — Joanna Connors

Religion, like science, is only noteworthy when it emphasizes a matter of what is true rather than whose belief is greater or lesser or which deity works for whom. Sincere religion and tested science are similar in that their assertions can be argued logically and objectively; otherwise, we get false cults and babble. — Criss Jami

Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth. And when a person does not understand the creation of resources and wealth, the only intellectual alternative is to believe that increasing wealth must be at the cost of someone else. This belief that our good fortune must be an exploitation of others may be the taproot of false prophecy about doom that our evil ways must bring upon us. — Julian Simon

What chimps don't seem capable of understanding is the state of false belief. They don't have a theory of mind that accounts for actions driven by beliefs in conflict with reality. And really, who lacking that will ever be able to navigate the human world? — Karen Joy Fowler

In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous. — Samuel P. Huntington

People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one's perception of reality, a barrier which Buddhism calls the attachment to the false view of self.
Attachment to the false view of self means belief in the presence of unchanging entities which exist on their own. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Custom, law bent my first years to the religion of the happy Muslims. I see it too clearly: the care taken of our childhood forms our feelings, our habits, our belief. By the Ganges I would have been a slave of the false gods, a Christian in Paris, a Muslim here. — Voltaire

The urge to want some bit of information to be true often clouds our ability to assess why that information may be false. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept. — Henry George

Because of this false idea, they devised an aesthetic belief in making the exterior of an object a reflection of the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. Yet these analyses of utility and necessity that, according to their beliefs, should be the basis for the construction of any object created by humanity become immediately absurd once we analyze all the object being manufactured today. A fork or a bed cannot come to be considered necessary for humanity's life and health, and yet retain a relative value.
They are 'learned necessities.' Modern human beings are suffocating under necessities like televisions, refrigerators, etc. And in the process making it impossible to live their real lives. Obviously we are not against modern technology, but we are against any notion of the absolute necessity of objects, to the point even of doubting their real utility.'
Asger Jorn — Tom McDonough

Heaven and hell are ways of thinking. Death is the false belief that anything could ever end. — Emily Fridlund

Stories are masks of God.
That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother's Grimm.
Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth.
Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God.
So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them. — Melanie Tem

The mystique and the false glamour of the writing profession grow partly out of a mistaken belief that people who can express profound ideas and emotions have ideas and emotions more profound than the rest of us. It isn't so. The ability to express is a special gift with a special craft to support it and is spread fairly equally among the profound, the shallow, and the mediocre. — Janet Burroway

False belief is more emotional than true belief — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case. — Christopher Hitchens

Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man. — William James

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue; and then, when we are finally proved wrong; impudently twisting the facts so as to show we were right. Intellectually, it it possible to carry on 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. — George Orwell

Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies. — Errol Morris

A true prophet would rather be believed false by many but actually true than believed true by many but actually false. — Criss Jami

The belief that public works necessarily create new jobs is false. If the money was raised by taxation, we saw, then for every dollar that the government spent on public works one less dollar was spent by the taxpayers to meet their own wants, and for every public job created one private job was destroyed. — Henry Hazlitt

When I was the captain of a ship I never failed to bring my ship to port and I won't fail to bring Romania to safe harbor. The belief that the president no longer represents the people is false. — Traian Basescu

We need to know the truth of that, pray to understand that death is just the false belief that anything could ever end. There's no going anywhere for any of us, not in reality. There's only changing how you see things." I — Emily Fridlund

There are no more ideologies in the authentic sense of false consciousness, only advertisements for the world through its duplication and the provocative lie which does not seek belief but commands silence. — Theodor Adorno

Belief is necessarily something false that diverts and suffocates effective production — Gilles Deleuze

For unfortunately the person most dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that one, the possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not true. — Thomas Hardy

Her sleep was enlivened by several dreams. One where Professor Wanstead's bushy eyebrows fell off because they were not his own eyebrows, but false ones. As she woke again, her first impression was that which often follows dreams, a belief that the dream in question had solved everything. 'Of course,' she thought, 'of course!' His eyebrows were false and that solved the whole thing. He was the criminal. — Agatha Christie

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it - to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse. — H.L. Mencken

The cycle begins with the false belief system shared by all addicts: that no one could want them or love them as they are. In fact, addicts can't love themselves. They are an object of scorn to themselves. This deep internalized shame gives rise to distorted thinking. The distorted thinking can be reduced to the belief, "I'll be okay if I drink, eat, have sex, get more money, work harder, etc." The shame turns one into what Kellogg has termed a "human doing," rather than a human being. Worth is measured on the outside, never on the inside. The mental obsession about the specific addictive relationship is the first mood alteration, since thinking takes us out of our emotions. — John Bradshaw

When we actively relate to people as rivals or enemies, we foster the false belief that we and they stand independent of one another. The truth is that we bind ourselves to them as if by an invisible tether, and we do so by our negative thoughts and feelings."
"Who we are is who we are with others. How they seem to us is a revelation of ourselves. — C. Terry Warner

Do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness. — Kent Nerburn

Time and time again does the pride of man influence his very own fall. While denying it, one gradually starts to believe that he is the authority, or that he possesses great moral dominion over others, yet it is spiritually unwarranted. By that point he loses steam; in result, he falsely begins trying to prove that unwarranted dominion by seizing the role of a condemner. — Criss Jami

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on 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. - George Orwell (1946) — Carol Tavris