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Belief quotes

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“nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know;” Michel de Montaigne, “The Essays of Michel de Montaigne” - 1580

“Assume a virtue, if you have it not.” William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” - 1623

“He did not say that because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen.” Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea” - 1952

“I say, then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that He loves you with your sin, in your sin.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.” Thomas Carlyle, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” - 1841

“He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1911

“I drank in my words like a thirsty man. I even began to believe them.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian's faith is unseen reality.” A. W. Tozer, “The Pursuit of God” - 1948

“People who are religious should be glad, since not everyone is blessed with the ability to believe in a higher order.” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“It is human to lament, human to weep with them that weep, but it is greater to believe, more blessed to contemplate the believer.” Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling” - 1843

“It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.” William Faulkner, “As I Lay Dying” - 1930

“For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.” George Eliot, “Middlemarch” - 1872

“As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine.” H. G. Wells, “The Time Machine” - 1895

“He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it, must occasionally have felt surprise when he has met with an animal having habits and structure not in agreement.” Charles Darwin, “On The Origin of Species” - 1859

“Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a...” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret. For in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life....” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe there, by the grace of God alone!” Thomas Carlyle, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” - 1841

“We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavour to efface them.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” - 1774

“The article of justification must be sounded in our ears incessantly because the frailty of our flesh will not permit us to take hold of it perfectly and to believe it with all our heart.” Martin Luther, “Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians” - 1535

“Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!” Walter Scott, “Ivanhoe” - 1820

“I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” - 1891

“If ye believed more in life, then would ye devote yourselves less to the momentary.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” - 1891

“But if I did not believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you—forever.” Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes” - 1912

“The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.” John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” - 1689

“OPTIMISM, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1911

“I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.” Ronald Reagan, “Inaugural Address” - 20 January 1981

“I had a new vision in front of me, and I always feel that if I can see it and believe it, then I can achieve it.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story” - 2012

“If you don’t believe in yourself, then how will anyone else believe in you?” Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story” - 2012

“If I understand this correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that the desire for honor among men made belief impossible.” A. W. Tozer, “The Pursuit of God” - 1948

“I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything. That which can be imagined is as much an approximation to truth as that which can be proved by mathematics.” Charlie Chaplin, “My Autobiography” - 1964

“Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.” Blaise Pascal, “Pensées” - 1670

“Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the Church, the family and the school.” Margaret Thatcher, “The Path to Power” - 1995

“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than...” Neil Gaiman, “American Gods” - 2001

“Everything is endured—disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui—in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.” Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” - 1934

“Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” - 1921

Related topics

religion God knowledge imagination superstition life reason heart freedom good faith Christianity miracle love trust mind blindness truth ignorance fate

Related authors

David Hume (3)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (2)
Thomas Carlyle (2)
Friedrich Nietzsche (2)
Ambrose Bierce (2)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (2)
A. W. Tozer (2)
William Shakespeare (1)
Ernest Hemingway (1)
William Faulkner (1)
James Joyce (1)
George Eliot (1)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1)
H. G. Wells (1)
Charles Darwin (1)
Bram Stoker (1)
Joseph Conrad (1)
Henry James (1)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1)
Martin Luther (1)

Related sources

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (3)
The Brothers Karamazov (2)
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (2)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2)
The Devil's Dictionary (2)
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story (2)
The Pursuit of God (2)
Hamlet (1)
As I Lay Dying (1)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1)
The Old Man and the Sea (1)
Middlemarch (1)
Self-Reliance (1)
The Time Machine (1)
On The Origin of Species (1)
Dracula (1)
Heart of Darkness (1)
The Portrait of a Lady (1)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1)
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1)