Quotes & Sayings About Non Belief

The Book of Mormon proposes a new purpose for America: becoming a realm of righteousness rather than an empire of liberty. Against increasing wealth and inequality, the Book of Mormon advocates the cause of the poor. Against the subjection of the Indians, it promises the continent to the native people. Against republican government, it proposes righteous rule by judges and kings under God's law. Against a closed canon Bible and non-miraculous religion, the Book of Mormon stands for ongoing revelation, miracles and revelation to all nations. Against skepticism, it promotes belief; against nationalism, a universal Israel. It foresees disaster for the nation if the love of riches, resistance to revelation, and Gentile civilization prevail over righteousness, revelation and Israel. — Richard L. Bushman

When you finally realize that peace is your natural state of being then you will know that any form of non-peace is a belief in illusion. Illusion that anything should be something other than what it is which can never be so. What if instead of waiting for what isn't to become your version of what is, why don't you be peaceful right now while you alter what isn't for you if you so choose? Is it ever worth it to wear a cloak of non-peacefulness over God Brilliance? — John Phillips

In 1897, in an extremely direct and decidedly non-Protestant fashion, New Orleans city officials, acknowledging their belief that sins of the flesh were inevitable, looked Satan in the eye, cut a deal, and gave him his own address. — Alecia P. Long

Once a person has made some sort of stable, symbolic connection between two things, the connection will influence his subsequent behavior and will generate its own 'proof.' This is why it is idle and foolish to try to 'refute' religious, political, and similar beliefs with empirical arguments about referents that are symbols to the believer but not to the non-believer. — Thomas Szasz

If a society takes it upon itself to prescribe and proscribe certain streams of belief - to prohibit certain less-favored strains of conscience - it may be the non-believer who is among the first to be condemned. A coercive monopoly of belief threatens everyone, whether we are talking about those who search the philosophies of men or follow the words of God. — Mitt Romney

The problem with most people who say they believe, however, is that said belief is only a thin layer of solid ice which rests over a vast ocean that is likewise deep with non-solid disbelief. — Stephen Richards

So much enthusiasm about the non-existence of God is somewhat bewildering, as no one appears to be nearly as excited about a similar absence of belief in unicorns, vampires, werewolves, astrology, nation-building, or the Labor Theory of Value. Nor is anyone dedicating much of their time to writing books and giving speeches at universities and conferences with the avowed goal of convincing others not to believe in them either. — Vox Day

We were greeted by the minister whose inclusive, non-judgemental smile was no more than a whisker away from a smirk. Have I made it clear? I don't like belief systems and even less like those that peddle self-righteousness. I have no doubt the minister was a sincere man, but I am not as impressed by the idea of sincerity as the sincere seem to be. — Jenny Diski

All non-smokers seem to live in the belief that smokers have wandered naively through life, bereft of the knowledge that their habit is extremely bad for them. — Michael Marshall Smith

Our world is so complex that we take for granted engineering processes that would dwarf any of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World; we ride railroad tracks that do not follow faithfully the curvature of the earth, for the train would jump the tracks if they were level. We pass skyscrapers whose stress and strain are figured to the millionth of an inch, yet take for granted that the Empire State Building actually sways constantly many feet. If we are religiously inclined, we take going to the church of our choice for granted; if we are non believers, we give no second thought to the fact that we do not have to attend religious services if we do not choose. Yet the very privilege of non-belief represents the victory of philosophy; otherwise the non-churchgoer would still face the lions or the stake. — Kahlil Gibran

Professor Hawking is heralded as 'the genius of Britain,' yet he believes in the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything and that life sprang from non-life. Why should anyone believe Mr. Hawking's writings if he cannot provide evidence for his unscientific belief that out of nothing, everything came? — Kirk Cameron

What was wrong with the past?" asked Mama Ramotswe. She intended the question seriously. There were too many people who took the view that the past was bad, that we should rid ourselves of all traces of it as soon as possible. But the past was not bad; some of it may have been less than perfect-- there had been cruelties then that we had done well to get rid of-- but there had also been plenty of good things. There had been the old Botswana ways, the courtesy and the kindness; there had been the attitude that you should find time for other people and not always be in a desperate rush; there had been the belief that you should listen to other people, should talk to them, rather than spend all your time fiddling with your electronic gadgets; there had been the view that it was a good thing to sit under a tree sometimes and look up at the sky and think about cattle or pumpkins or non-electric things like that. — Alexander McCall Smith

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

You will never find a faery at a science fair. Why? Because science is all about proving theories and understanding the universe. Science folds everything into neat logical, well-explained packages. The fey are magical, capricious, illogical and unexplainable. Science cannot prove the existence of faeries, so naturally we do not exist. That type of non-belief is fatal to faeries. — Julie Kagawa

Each of us is aware he's a material being, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and that the strength of all our emotions combined cannot counteract those laws. It can only hate them. The eternal belief of lovers and poets in the power of love which is more enduring that death, the finis vitae sed non amoris that has pursued us through the centuries is a lie. But this lie is not ridiculous, it's simply futile. To be a clock on the other hand, measuring the passage of time, one that is smashed and rebuilt over and again, one in whose mechanism despair and love are set in motion by the watchmaker along with the first movements of the cogs. To know one is a repeater of suffering felt ever more deeply as it becomes increasingly comical through a multiple repetitions. To replay human existence - fine. But to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune pushing coins over and over into the jukebox? — Stanislaw Lem

You learn in America to speak two ways. You learn in public discourse not to be very specific about your religious life. Or, if we talk about it, we'll find a secular way of doing it that will not be offensive to people of non-belief. So, that you go through life with these alternate voices. — Richard Rodriguez

If my interlocutor desires to convince me that Jupiter has inhabitants, and that his description of them is accurate, it is for him to bring forward evidence in support of his contention. The burden of proof evidently lies on him; it is not for me to prove that no such beings exist before my non-belief is justified, but for him to prove that they do exist before my belief can be fairly claimed. Similarly, it is for the affirmer of God's existence to bring evidence in support of his affirmation; the burden of proof lies on him. — Annie Besant

The main focus of Burroughs' Wild Boys tetralogy is an apocalyptic world in which the social order is disrupted enough to allow gay men the possibility of forming seperate communities. The eponymous characters of The Wild Boys band together in the deserts of North Africa to create an alternative to heterosexual society and simultaneously wage war on an intolerant, heterosexual social order that refuses them independence. Burroughs repeatedly links the boys with the youth movements of the late 1960's. He cites Genet's belief that 'it is time for writers to support the rebellion of youth not only with their words but with their presence as well.' The Wild Boys can thus be read as a progression from the riots of Chicago and Stonewall in that they are a radical group of youthful, queer, multiracial revolutionaries who echo Burroughs' own belief that non-violent action is not enough. — Jamie Russell

Yes, believers and non-believers and skeptics can all live together and get along. But there cannot be an imperialistic imposition of religion by the state or by the church. All people must be equal
believers, skeptics, disbelievers, atheists, and those who chose religion. Unless we are all deemed equal, and unless the morality of disbelief is deemed the equivalent of the morality of belief, we will simply be tolerated, and that is not the American way. — Alan Dershowitz

Regardless of your religious beliefs, you should never tell a mourning mother that it was "God's plan." For some people, that can be worse than saying nothing at all. For a non-believer, the words that are meant to console a religious person can do quite the opposite. — David G. McAfee

A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. — Richard Dawkins

Obviously there are exceptions, but I suspect that for many people the main reason they cling to religion is not that it is consoling, but that they have been let down by our educational system and don't realize that non-belief is even an option. — Anonymous

We should be cautiously open to the spiritual and non-rational, and skeptical of the more invisible magical thinking - what we might call "magical reason" - pervading secular thought and experience in modern society. Science and technology are for most people a new religion, and their orthodoxies are believed with the same fervor. — David Watson

There, he thought, was the final abortion of the creed of collective interdependence, the creed of non-identity, non-property, non-fact: the belief that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another. — Ayn Rand

Our return to an image-based culture means the destruction of the abstract thought made possible by a literate, print-based society. Image-based societies do not grasp or cope with ambiguity, nuance, doubt and the many layers of irrational motives and urges, some of them frightening, that make human actions complex and finally unfathomable. They eschew self-criticism for amusement. They build fantastic non-reality-based belief systems that cater to human desires and illusions rather than human reality. These illusions, whether religious or secular, offer a simple and unexamined myth that the human race is advancing morally, spiritually and materially toward paradise. This advance is proclaimed as inevitable. This faith in our advancement makes us passive and complacent. — Chris Hedges

Belief in non-violence is based on the assumption that human nature in the essence is one and therefore unfailingly responds to the advances of love ... — Mahatma Gandhi

As a non-believer, I want the atheist case to be made. I want religious belief to be scrutinised and challenged. I want Britain to be a genuinely secular nation, where religious belief is protected and defended as a private matter of conscience. But I feel prevented from doing so because atheism in public life has become so dominated by a particular breed that ends up dressing up bigotry as non-belief. It is a tragedy. And that is why it is so important that atheists distance themselves from those who undermine our position. Richard Dawkins can rant and rave about Muslims as much as he wants. But atheists: let's stop allowing him to do it in our name. — Owen Jones

In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. — Rupertus Meldenius

I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence,' because I don't believe that I am non-violent ... Right now, I would love to kill George Bush. I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die, the anger in me is just beyond belief. It's our duty as human beings, whatever age we are, to become the protectors of human life. — Betty Williams

The Wiccan Rede You can do whatever you want so long as you do not harm anyone. This is a belief that true practitioners take to heart and is one of the underlying, non-negotiable beliefs common to all schools of Wicca. The Rule of Three This is quite a simple principle - whatever you do to others will come back to you three times over. Thus, if you choose to send out negative energy into the world, or choose to do wicked things, you are only hurting yourself. We are all Connected Wiccans believe that everyone and everything is spiritually connected and so it is important to work to improve the world, for the good of all. — Sasha Cillihypi

Life was a pleasure; he looked back at its moments, many of them as much shrouded in mist as the opposite bank of the Thames; objectively, many of them held only misery, fear, confusion; but afterwards, and even at the time, he had known an exhilaration stronger than the misery, fear, or confusion. A fragment of belief came to him from another epoch: 'Cogito ergo sum'. For him that had not been true; his truth had been, 'Senito ergo sum'. I feel so I exist. He enjoyed this fearful, miserable, confused life, and not only because it made more sense than non-life. — Brian W. Aldiss

36. Argument from Incomplete Devastation: A plane crashed killing 143 passengers and crew. But one child survived with only third-degree burns. Therefore God exists. 37. Argument from Possible Worlds: If things had been different, then things would be different. That would be bad. Therefore God exists. 38. Argument from Sheer Will: I do believe in God! I do believe in God! I do I do I do. I do believe in God! Therefore God exists. 39. Argument from Non-belief: The majority of the world's population are non-believers in Christianity. This is just what Satan intended. Therefore God exists. 40. Argument from Post-Death Experience: Person X died an atheist. He now realizes his mistake. Therefore God exists. 41. Argument from Emotional Blackmail: God loves you. How could you be so heartless as not to believe in him? Therefore God exists. THE — Richard Dawkins

Shepherd Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?
River: Fixing your Bible.
Book: I, um ... What?
River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense.
Shepherd Book: No, no. You-you-you can't ...
River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem.
Shepherd Book: Really?
River: We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.
Shepherd Book: River, you don't fix the Bible.
River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense.
Book: 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, River. It fixes you. — Ben Edlund

Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief. — Jesse Ventura

Allegiance to a belief system can have deep, non-rational roots, — Anne Applebaum

It's what non-car people don't get. They see all cars as just a ton and a half, two tons of wires, glass, metal, and rubber, and that's all they see. People like you or I know we have an unshakable belief that cars are living entities ... You can develop a relationship with a car and that's what non-car people don't get ... When something has foibles and won't handle properly, that gives it a particularly human quality because it makes mistakes, and that's how you can build a relationship with a car that other people won't get. — Jeremy Clarkson

The more ignorant the authority, the more dogmatic it is. In the fields where no real knowledge is even possible, the authorities are the fiercest and most assured and punish non-belief with the severest of penalties. — Abraham Myerson

People think that fun in Christ is non-existent, but there is fun wherever your heart lives. — Criss Jami

Refutations of the views of inherently existent production are not just refutations of rival systems but should be taken as a branch of the process of overcoming one's own innate sense that things are inherently produced. The innate non-analytical intellect does not conceive cause and effect to be either the same, or inherently different, or both, or neither; however, if the objects that the intellect misconceives as inherently existent did in fact inherently exist, they would necessarily exist in one of these four ways. Thus, through eliminating these four possibilities, the inherently existent products that are the objects of this innate ignorance are shown to be non-existent. By attacking in this way the falsely conceived object, the falsely conceiving subject is gradually overcome. The false subject is removed by overcoming belief in the false object. — Jeffrey Hopkins

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

Consider non your superior, whatever their rank or station in life. Treat all fairly or they will seek revenge. Be careful with your money. Hold fast to your belief and others will listen." he continued at a slower pace, " of the affairs of love ... my only advice is to be honest. thats your most powerfull too to unlock a heart or gain forgiveness. that is all i have to say"Garrow to Roran p 64 — Christopher Paolini

the Western principle of the sanctity of human life - a principle which is unique in the sharpness with which it separates the wrongness of taking the life of any human being, no matter how severely defective, from the wrongness of taking the life of any non-human animal, no matter how intelligent - can, as I have argued elsewhere, be explained as the legacy of the Judeo-Christian world view, in which humans, but not animals, are made in the image of God and have immortal souls. For those of us who do not accept the authority of the Judeo-Christian religions, this explanation should lead to a critical re-examination of our belief in the sanctity of all and only human life. One — Peter Singer

If non-linear leaps in intelligence and ability are possible, why haven't these effects been observed in our schools? I believe the answer lies in the profound inertia of human thought: when an entire society believes something is impossible, it suppresses, by its very way of life, the evidence that would contradict that belief. — John Mighton

Anti-clericalism and non-belief, have their bigots just as orthodoxy does. — Julien Green

Belief fixes a granular universe and causes that universe to persist. Nothing can be allowed to change because that way your non-moving universe vanishes. But it moves of itself when you do not. It evolves beyond you and is no longer accessible to you. — Frank Herbert

Atheism is not synonymous with anti-theism and not all atheists are 'active.' There are many non-believers who aren't activists, who don't oppose religion at all, or who are simply not all are interested in discussing belief or lack thereof. — David G. McAfee

The irony of this is that while believers and non-believers are on opposite sides where religious ideas are concerned they may also find themselves on the same side in the struggle for freedom of belief. — Brian Whitaker

The most important thing a person could learn from being around horses is how to control the expression of their emotions, even the non-verbal ones, and lose all unnatural fears. Fear only binds what should be free. That applies in all areas of thought, belief and actions. If you can't overcome it, then resist it. Be courageous. — Judith-Victoria Douglas

Excuses will become self-refuting. No man who does not believe that Jesus is the perfect, sinless Son of God can, in his desperation and love for sin, reasonably use and misconstrue Jesus' words that unless a Christian is perfect, then that Christian cannot judge sin. Otherwise this non-believer is unconsciously entertaining a belief that Jesus, unlike any other man to ever live, was indeed perfect and sinless in His judgments and therefore that Christian is supposed to be like Him. — Criss Jami

The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism," writes Peter Drucker, "has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, non-economic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Stalinist Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."9 No less significant — Friedrich Hayek

Well, I think I'm not a non-believer, and I'm not a believer. But, on the other hand, I couldn't give you a good enough reason why EVP doesn't exist. I don't know enough about it, so how could I say it's not true. Plus, a person's reality is a person's reality so that's your belief system. It's all perception anyway, isn't it. — Michael Keaton

The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world's recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened. Some are great mystics, some are great scholars, some are both, and most are neither, but very few are awake. This core misconception will be a big theme in this book because it's the primary obstacle in the quest for enlightenment. Nobody's getting there because nobody knows where there is, and those who are entrusted to point the way are, for a variety of reasons, pointing the wrong way. At the very heart of this confusion lies the belief that abiding non-dual awareness - enlightenment - and the non-abiding experience of cosmic consciousness - mystic union - are synonymous when, in fact, they're completely unrelated. — Jed McKenna

I have my own. I don't believe in religion, just as you mentioned. I think it does more harm than good. Believers see it as the one truth, non believers see it as trash and king's use it for power. Not one of them is right. — Celia Mcmahon

Even with my non-believing teammates, there is a great amount of unity and I truly believe that's God working. It's really cool in team sports when you're united around a belief or something you want to accomplish. — Tobin Heath

I feel strong in my belief, based on my widely traveled collaborations, that a one-to-one contact through art contains potent peaceful powers, and is the most non-elitist way to share information, hopefully seducing us into creating mutual understandings for the benefit of all. — Robert Rauschenberg

Over the course of history, many Jews have ultimately embraced Christianity - some forcibly, some in order to advance in non-Jewish society, some out of wholehearted belief. — Meir Soloveichik

I'm very strict in my belief that non-fiction should be truthful, and fiction is for invented narratives. — Darin Strauss

It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally non-violent struggle for justice. — Cesar Chavez

True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton 's Strange Story; "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria! — H. P. Blavatsky

Regardless of nationality, all men are brothers. God is "our Father who art in heaven." The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is unconditional and inexorable ... The lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of non-resistance, and so convinced was he of the soundness of that doctrine that he sealed his belief with death on the cross ... When human law conflicts with Divine law, my duty is clear. Conscience, my infallible guide, impels me to tell you that prison, death, or both, are infinitely preferable to joining any branch of the Army. — Ben Salmon

The claim to know that no god exists is just irrational. The non-existence of any god has no evidence, let alone proof. To know something for certain there must be proof. To hold to a belief there must be evidence. Until
then, the only actual reasonable position is agnosticism. — Lewis N. Roe

The uniting of Orthodoxy with state absolutism came about on the soil of a non-belief in the Divineness of the earth, in the earthly future of mankind; Orthodoxy gave away the earth into the hands of the state because of its own non-belief in man and mankind, because of its nihilistic attitude towards the world. Orthodoxy does not believe in the religious ordering of human life upon the earth, and it compensates for its own hopeless pessimism by a call for the forceful ordering of it by state authority. — Nikolai Berdyaev

I don't assign myself to the names of any religious or non religious groups I prefer my actions and beliefs to be manic or marvelous just like me — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Only the 'Right belief' gives rise to non-contradicting principle and that which is free from contradiction is known as 'Principle'. — Dada Bhagwan

Hence arises the belief that traditional culture, which is always based on particular connections, identities, and meanings, is intrinsically oppressive; that "essentialism," the belief that things have a particular nature and significance, is ignorance and bigotry; and that "discrimination", treating one connection as more fitting than another for any non-technological reason, is irrational and wrong. — James Kalb

The bigots, whether they are of the Islamist variety or the anti-Muslim variety, essentially agree on a few matters. One is their belief that Islam itself - not Islamism - is a supremacist ideology that is here to take over the world; another is that, therefore, Muslims and non-Muslims can never live equally and peacefully together, but must separate into religiously defined entities. — Sam Harris

I am no Patriot for I try to breathe in with the steadfast belief that my country is the Earth and my religion is Humanism. — K. Hari Kumar