Stopped Believing Quotes & Sayings

When Moses smashed the golden calf, the Israelites stopped worshipping it. When a flood inundated the temple of Baal, the Malachites decided Baal wasn't such a hot god anyway. But Jesus has been out to lunch for two thousand years, and people not only still follow his teachings, they live and die believing he'll come back eventually, and it will be business as usual when he does. — Stephen King

I don't know if I ended up siding with the academics just because I happened to end up in graduate school, or if I ended up in graduate school because I already secretly sided with the academics. In any case, I stopped believing that "theory" had the power to ruin literature for anyone, or that it was possible to compromise something you loved by studying it. Was love really such a tenuous thing? Wasn't the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse yourself, to become possessed? — Elif Batuman

The truth is, that I feel alone most of the time. I stopped believing in happiness, but I know that music makes me feel good. — Jared Leto

Just keep on going and keep believing in your own original vision, no matter what odds you have to overcome. And especially don't be stopped by your own fears. — Angelina Maccarone

I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in. — Deborah Feldman

Good and Evil are names for what people do, not for what they are ... stopped believing there was a power of good and evil. That they were outside of us ... People are too complicated for labels. — Philip Pullman

I began to understand that dancing well had everything to do with believing you could. Like those dreams of flying- dipping gracefully through the air in your weightless body- if in your sleep, you stopped to think about it for more than half a second, you'd crash like a sack of dead ducks onto the roof of a church. — Laura Kasischke

How fucking ironic - I'd been looking for love for the last eight years. And when I finally stopped wanting and believing in it, it found me. I didn't have feelings for Carson - I was in love with him. — Lauren Stewart

In my twenties in San Francisco I became a sophisticate and an acting agnostic. It wasn't that I had stopped believing in God; it's just that God didn't seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented. — Maya Angelou

LUKEWARM PEOPLE do not live by faith; their lives are structured so they never have to. They don't have to trust God if something unexpected happens - they have their savings account. They don't need God to help them - they have their retirement plan in place. They don't genuinely seek out what life God would have them live - they have life figured and mapped out. They don't depend on God on a daily basis - their refrigerators are full and, for the most part, they are in good health. The truth is, their lives wouldn't look much different if they suddenly stopped believing in God. — Francis Chan

I've spent a lot of time in my life dedicating myself to love or the pursuit of love or the understanding of love. And now I've stopped believing in happy endings and I've started believing in good days. — Drew Barrymore

People haven't stopped believing in love. They haven't stopped wanting to be in love. They just don't believe in a happy ending anymore. They still believe in love, and falling in love, but they know now that ... they know that romances almost never end as well as they begin. — Gregory David Roberts

Have you stopped seeing great things happen in your life? Perhaps you have stopped believing that God can work in a mighty way even in our generation. — Luis Palau

just because you have stopped believing in something you once were promised does not mean that the promise itself was a lie. — Michael Chabon

I never stopped believing in my ability or what I was doing. I want to pass that sense of faith and perseverance on to others. — Vantile Whitfield

I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all. — Hannah Brencher

I saw my name: THOMAS, Petria. Saw my time, 57.72. Saw the number one next to them. I'd done it. Me! Petria Thomas, Olympic champion. The feeling inside was one of pure, utter joy. Excitement, disbelief, relief, hapiness, amazement, the whole works. Id worked so hard. I'd gone through so much, privately, publicly. I'd lost faith in myself and found it again. I'd sometimes stopped believing that I could do it and that I had a purpose in life. I'd come through the darkness, and this, this moment, was the sweetest, most amazing light there could possibly be. I was alive and loving it! — Petria Thomas

I never talk about the end game." He winked at her. "I've lived so long without death that I've stopped believing in it. — Gregory Maguire

Nobody stopped believing that other people were more guilty than they were. Why do people have so much trouble seeing their own faults but such an easy time seeing everyone else's? — Carol Plum-Ucci

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. — Philip Pullman

Neither one of us could really articulate how we felt until I heard Lamott referencing Paul Tillich and telling the audience, "The opposite of faith is not doubt - it's certainty." Steve and I didn't leave religion because we stopped believing in God. Religion left us when it started putting politics and certainty before love and mystery. — Brene Brown

The world wasn't real anymore. Everything in it was a fraudulent copy of what it should have been, and everything that happened in it shouldn't have been happening. For a long time afterward, Ferguson lived under the spell of this illusion, sleepwalking through his days and struggling to fall asleep at night, sick of a world he had stopped believing in, doubting everything that presented itself to his eyes. — Paul Auster

She realized, when relationships failed to last, it was not because love was no longer present, but because people had stopped believing in themselves and in their partners. — Christina Westover

I've learnt something more. The expectation of a body can last as long as any hope. Like mine expecting yours. As soon as they gave you two life sentences, I stopped believing in their time. — John Berger

I believed in all the things written within me, I'd just somehow along the way stopped believing in my book jacket. — Samantha Young

I'd decided to keep fighting, keep searching for answers. Because as long as I did that, there would always be a chance my holes would heal. I could have hope. My gaps only became inevitable when I stopped believing they could be filled. Because that's when I'd sit back and let life pile on the crap. Like she did. As long as I had hope, the good things would stay good. So, no, I'd never be a kick-ass movie heroine. But I was real. And loveable. And for now, that was enough. A Note from the Author Bullying is a unique form of torture. — Aimee L. Salter

But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger's backyard, our mother's rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light. — Julie Otsuka

When the kingdom's people had stopped believing in the druids' deities they had not begun believing in nothing, they had begun believing in anything. — Stephen Hunt

People under thirty haven't yet stopped believing that something wonderful can suddenly happen. — Peter Hoeg

This was how you wound up in the Inquisition. When you stopped being able to see any difference between Light Ones and Dark Ones. When for you, people weren't even a flock of sheep, but just a handful of spiders in a glass jar. When you stopped believing in the future, and all you wanted to do was preserve the status quo. For yourself. For those few individuals who were still dear to you. — Sergei Lukyanenko

If I'd stopped believing that my life would eventually get better, I don't think I would have survived high school. — Susane Colasanti

Though they love people, the Christians are enemies of our life, our gods and our crimes; hence she fled from me, as from a man who belongs to our [Roman] society, and with whom she would have to share a life counted criminal by Christians ... I should not have stopped her from believing in her Christ, and would myself have reared an altar to Him in the atrium. What harm could one more god do me? Why might I not believe in Him, - I who do not believe over much in the old gods? ... It would not be difficult for me even to renounce other gods, for no reasoning mind believes in them at present. But it seems that all this is not enough yet for the Christians. It is not enough to honor Christ, one must also live according to His teachings; and here thou art on the shore of a sea which they command thee to wade through.
Quo Vadis — Henryk Stanczyk

My mother was an awful cook, an exceptionally awful kosher cook, but I stayed kosher until I got to college, even though I'd long stopped believing in God. — Simon Schama

Oh, I'll just improvise. I doubt you'll be much help. You couldn't have any real skills yet. Probably all you can do is stand there and shimmer, like some kind of freakin' Christmas ornament
meaning only a believer or two will see you."
"Only a believer?"
"You mean you still haven't figured out that?" She shook her head in disbelief.
But he had figured it out; he just didn't want to admit it, just didn't want it to be true. The old lady had been a believer. So was Philip. Both of them had seen him shimmering. But Ivy had not. Ivy had stopped believing. — Elizabeth Chandler

Knowing that we'd meet Ruby at the point where she stopped believing, I knew I was also going to have to deal with what you do with your capacity for belief if you don't have an object for your belief. — K.M. Soehnlein

I hope you find what you're looking for," Micah said. "I've already stopped looking," Damon said quietly. "It's kind of hard to look for something you've stopped believing in. — Maya Banks

Some of us have a hard time believing that we are actually able to face our own pain. We have convinced ourselves that our pain is too deep, too frightening, something to avoid at all costs. Yet if we finally allow ourselves to feel the depth of that sadness and gently let it break our hearts, we may come to feel a great freedom, a genuine sense of release and peace, because we have finally stopped running away from ourselves and from the pain that lives within us. — Wayne Muller

I just never stopped believing that what I wanted could be real. — Susane Colasanti

Mere lack of evidence, of course, is no reason to denounce a theory. Look at intelligent design. The fact that it is bollocks hasn't stopped a good many people from believing in it. Darwinism itself is only supported by tons of evidence, which is a clear indication that Darwin didn't write his books himself. — Eric Idle

I stopped believing in stars when the morning came by. — Salma Abdulatif

Have you ever stopped to think what fun this business of living can be? If you haven't, and if you are one of those who insist upon believing that life is humdrum, grim and boring, then I'm afraid this department is not for you. For I don't believe any such thing. I know that we can all free ourselves and live our lives fully, zestfully and joyfully! — Dorothy Draper

Many may have stopped believing in you, but God hasn't. — Anita R. Sneed-Carter

Just because you want friends with you doesn't make you selfish. It makes you human. And even when we think something's an unwise idea, that doesn't mean we've stopped believing in you. I will never stop believing in you. What I said about believing you can do anything, be anything
I still think that. I still admire that you don't let others' limitations stop you. I love that about you. I love you. — Jodi Meadows

It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over. — Dmitri Shostakovich

Tearing the paper means you've stopped believing in the infinite possibilities of a square. — Tor Udall

Do you know, I had almost lost faith in the goddess? I almost stopped believing in Her. But I realized I had to become something. I had to take what was done to me and use it to make myself into what I wanted to be. And I wanted this. And when I called Her, the goddess came. — Lev Grossman

I am an anthropologist who lost faith in her own method, who stopped believing that observable activity defined anthropos. — Joan Didion

The Holy One. I have never stopped believing in him. I don't understand the idea that God wants to be worshipped one way alone, and when I feel overwhelmed by the immensity and beauty of his creation, I am glad my mother taught me to bless and praise him everywhere. My — Laurel Corona

I stared at him. At this too-thin, too-sincere boy. This person.
Because I knew what he meant. I understood exactly. And I'd felt it too, that interior certainty. But over the years, I'd let all the fervour fade. I'd stopped believing in it, somehow. I'd let it become something I did, not something I was. — Alexis Hall

Let me put it this way, my father believed in a righteous God. Deus volt, that was his motto- 'because God wills it.' It was the Crusaders' motto, and they went into battle and were slaughtered just like my father. And when I saw him lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might not, but I don't think it matters. Either way we're on our own. — Cassandra Clare

The great political, artistic, and religious project of modernity has been to find a meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan. ...But we are still convinced our lives have meaning. As of 2016, humankind indeed manages to hold the stick at both ends. Not only do we possess far more power than ever before, but against all expectations. God's death did not lead to social collapse. Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and his all-encompassing plans. — Yuval Noah Harari

The woods were deserted that day.
The stones stood still and silent, as though they were waiting for something. At the center of them all, a jagged piece of amber glowed in the growing darkness. Lights fizzed softly around it, turning pink, orange, purple, blue.
No one saw it. No one ever did. Why would they? No one knoew about its magic, not anymore. They had forgotten all about such magic a long, long time ago. About the same time they stopped believing in faries.
How foolish. — Liz Kessler

I was 13 when I was started questioning and 16 when I stopped believing in God. — Jim Jefferies

It's only when I stopped finding ways to disagree, stopped believing that there was something different and unique about my problem that I even began to recover. If — Sasha Stephens

As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours. — Mark Helprin

Losing both parents at a young age gave me a sense that you can't really control life - so you'd better live it while it's here. I stopped believing in a storybook existence a long time ago. All you can do is push in a direction and see what comes of it. — Jon Hamm

How do you tell an adult that maybe everything wrong in the world stems from the fact that she's stopped believing the impossible can happen? — Jodi Picoult

I love you," I said. "What we have, you and me, it's what I thought love should be, but I'd stopped believing it existed. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

Doubt gets a bad rap. Doubting doesn't mean you've stopped believing, but that you've started thinking. Sheep doubt nothing. Chances are you'll get further in life by questioning things than by living like something that ends up as dinner and a sweater. — Amy Alkon

Even after years of constant abuse from her stepmother and her stepsisters, Cinderella remained a good person with high hopes. She never stopped believing in herself and in the good of the world. And although she married the prince in the end, Cinderella always had inner happiness. Her story shows that even in the worst of situations- even when it seems no one in the world appreciates you-as long as you have hope, everything can get better... — Chris Colfer

As of 2016, humankind indeed manages to hold the stick at both ends. Not only do we possess far more power than ever before, but against all expectations, God's death did not lead to social collapse. Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan, all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and His all-encompassing plans. God-fearing Syria is a far more violent place than the atheist Netherlands. — Yuval Noah Harari

The fact that it is sometimes difficult for me to believe in God doesn't mean that I deny his existence. If I stopped believing in him, I wouldn't be able to continue living. — Rafael Abalos

The first time that I entered through the double-locked doors of the psych ward I was terrified, believing for no real reason that such places harbored evil souls ready to assault me at any moment. But once inside I found it to be the slowest-moving place on Earth, and I saw that these patients were unique only in that time had stopped inside their wounds, which were seemingly never to heal. The pain was so thick and palpable in the psych ward that a visitor could breathe it like the heavy humidity of summer air, and I soon realized that the challenge would not be to defend myself from patients, but to defend myself against my own increasing indifference toward them. What originally struck me as cryptic in chapter fifty-nine was now mundane: they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. — Hope Jahren

I had long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no. — Jeff VanderMeer

Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left, lost and scared and dispossessed, to get by on what little smidgens of worship or belief we could find. — Neil Gaiman

Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire ... decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists. — N. T. Wright

Don't trust the one who stopped believing. Trust the one who never believed. — Marty Rubin

Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk. — Maureen Dowd

And when I saw him[my father] lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might be not. Either way, we're on our own. — Cassandra Clare

People belong to each other only as long as they both believe. He stopped believing. — Paula McLain

Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing. — Billy Bob Thornton

We have stopped believing in progress. What progress that is ! — Jorge Luis Borges

I've stopped dreaming to believing in God. — Evans Biya

When my mom died, I stopped believing in God — Colleen Hoover

There was a time when I wondered - do I really believe all of this? I'm half German. Rational! Does this make any sense? After a while, such questions stopped mattering. Believing or not believing, it was all the same. I found myself compelled to behave toward the world as it if contained sentient spiritual beings. The question of whether or not they actually existed became irrelevant. After I'd stopped thinking about it for a while, the ritual of offering tobacco became comforting and then necessary. Whenever I offered tobacco I was for that moment fully there, fully thinking, willing to address the mystery. — Louise Erdrich

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph. — Shirley Temple Black

The drone in my ear, it's like the tornado drill in elementary school, the hand-cranked siren that rang mercilessly, all of us hunched over on ourselves, facing the basement walls, heads tucked into our chests. Beth and me wedged tight, jeaned legs pressed against each other. The sounds of our own breathing. Before we all stopped believing a tornado, or anything, could touch us, ever — Megan Abbott

People always seemed to think that you stopped believing things in a single, lightning-bolt moment, an instantaneous revelation of loss. For her, at least, the process of disenchantment had been achingly slow. — Zoe Heller

People belong together to each other only as long as they believe. He stopped believing. — Paula McLain

Gyuri had dropped church much in the same way he had stopped believing in Santa Claus; there came a point where it was impossible to take it seriously. — Tibor Fischer