Best belief & ifs Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“I have always been a firm believer in working hard for what is right and for making your own breaks if you want things to change.”

Ifs Want Hard Belief Change Work Break Believer Firm

Author:Dolly Parton

“It is my firm belief that all our lives we are preparing to be somebody or something, even if we don't do it consciously. And the time comes one morning when you wake up and find that you have become irrevocably what you were preparing all this time to be.”

Ifs Belief Morning Our Lives Wake Up Firm Preparing Firm Beliefs

Book:Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations

Source: Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations

“Those, who are strongly wedded to what I shall call 'the classical theory', will fluctuate, I expect, between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to determine if either of these or the third alternative is right.”

Ifs Belief History Power Learning Theory Economics Thirds Determine Alternatives Nothing New Saying Nothing

Book:General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money

Source: General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money

“If we repeatedly read the Bible without the help of the Holy Spirit, it tends to reinforce our own prejudices and rock-hard doctrinal positions. We end up merely finding ammunition for what we already believe. We become so spiritually proud, so convinced of our own positions, that the Spirit is hindered in helping us to grow in the things of God.”

“A man must be himself convinced if he is to convince others. The prophet must be his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm is contagious: belief creates belief.”

Ifs Men Belief Convinced Enthusiasm Prophet Convince Disciple Contagious

Author:George Henry Lewes

“It's almost impossible to deal with a crazy man, except that he does have religious beliefs, and the world of Islam will be damaged if a fanatic like him should commit murder in the name of religion against 60 innocent people.”

People Ifs Men World Should Doe Names Belief Religious Deals Impossible Crazy Murder Islam Commit Innocent Fanatics Religious Belief Crazy Man

Author:Ruhollah Khomeini

“If somebody can create an absolute system of beliefs and rules of conduct that will guide a business man at eleven o'clock in the morning, a boy trying to select a career, a woman in an unhappy love affair--well then, surely no pragmatist will object. He insists only that philosophy shall come down to earth and be tried out there.”

Source: Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest

“The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.”

Ifs World Believe Would Be Belief Moral Standards Betrayal

Author:James A. Baldwin

“If you vent anger with the object of spreading your toxic feelings, the result will have nothing to do with healing. Your anger is your weapon. On the other hand, if you release anger the way you'd expel a rock from your shoe, your intention clearly has healing behind it. Once the anger starts flowing, both of these alternatives might feel the same. Anger is anger. But if you have a healing intention, two things will happen: you will feel more peaceful after your anger has been released, and you will feel like an old, fixed belief in enemies and injustice has started to move.”

“When a belief vanishes, there survives it -- more and more vigorously so as to cloak the absence of the power, now lost to us, of imparting reality to new things -- a fetishistic attachment to the old things which it did once animate, as if it was in them and not in ourselves that the divine spark resided, and as if our present incredulity had a contingent cause -- the death of the gods.”

Ifs Reality Belief Lost Causes Divine Absence Attachment Sparks New Things Cloaks Belief In God Old Things Incredulity

Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (A Modern Library E-Book)

Source: In Search of Lost Time, Volume I: Swann's Way (A Modern Library E-Book)

Ifs Years Looks Seems Together Past Belief Memories Happened Contrary Virgins Our Memories Contrary To Popular Belief

Author:George Orwell

“The time has come, I think, when we must recognize bisexuality as a normal form of human behavior... we shall not really succeed in discarding the straitjacket of our cultural beliefs about sexual choice if we fail to come to terms with the well-documented, normal human capacity to love members of both sexes.”

Ifs Thinking Humans Wells Form Choices Belief Sex Term Failing Succeed Members Behavior Normal Capacity Human Behavior Capacity To Love Bisexuality Human Capacity

Author:Margaret Mead

“I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.”

Ifs Needs Belief Accepting Doubt

Author:Christopher Isherwood

“There is nothing in the nature of a miracle that should render it incredible:;: its credibility depends upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. An event of extreme probability will not necessarily command our belief unless upon a sufficiency of proof; and so an event which we may regard as highly improbable may command our belief if it is sustained by sufficient evidence. So that the credibility or incredibility of an event does not rest upon the nature of the event itself, but depends upon the nature and sufficiency of the proof which sustains it.”

Ifs Should May Doe Belief Events Depends Evidence Miracle Regard Incredibles Extremes Proof Command Sufficient Probability Credibility Improbable Sufficiency

Book:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

Source: Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

“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.”

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Nothing is absolute any longer. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.”

Ifs Choices Belief Views Absolutes Point Of View You Choose

Book:Son of a smaller hero: a novel

Source: Son of a smaller hero: a novel

“The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.”

“Perhaps the thought of going to hell doesn't alarm you, because you don't believe in it. That may be your belief, but if hell exists, your lack of belief won't make it go away. Standing on a freeway and saying, "I don't believe in trucks" won't make the 18-wheeler disappear.”

Ifs Believe May Belief Hell Standing Don't Believe Disappear Going Away Truck Alarms Freeways

Author:Kirk Cameron

“One of the great threats to our national security is social cohesion. If people no longer believe that you can start out anywhere and end up at the top successfully in America, that the American dream is part of the past, I think that erodes a sense of belief and confidence in our nation.”

People Ifs Thinking Believe Ends Dream America Past Belief Nations Social Security Threat American Dream National Security Cohesion Erode

Author:Joel Klein

“I do have a residual belief that, if at all possible, you should try not to mock the weak.”

Ifs Should Trying Belief Weak Mock Residual

Author:Ian Hislop

“Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.”

People Ifs Thinking Believe Persons Enough Belief Prove Eternity Notion Remarkable Thinker Vertebrates

Author:Robert Anton Wilson

“The second step to achieving your goals in the New Year involves action and this is where many people run off track. The life we are living and have known to this point is comfortable and easy. Therefore we find it hard to establish new habits and routines even if we know they will bring us a better life. Our old belief system drags us back into the familiar. It is hard to overcome and we often experience small setbacks. This is the time to go back and look at your goals. Read your goal statement repeatedly and remind yourself of what you want and why.”

“Science has been effective at furthering our understanding of nature because the scientific ethos is based on three key principles: (1) follow the evidence wherever it leads; (2) if one has a theory, one needs to be willing to try to prove it wrong as much as one tries to prove that it is right; (3) the ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.”

Source: A Universe From Nothing

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

Source: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

“When a story has gone the grand circuit, and travels back to us uncontradicted, we may reasonably begin to relax in our belief of it. If nobody questions it, it is manifestly a fiction; if it passes current, it is almost sure to be a counterfeit. The course of truth never yet ran smooth.”

Ifs May Stories Courses Belief Fiction Gone Currents Ran Relax Smooth Circuits Counterfeit

Author:Samuel Laman Blanchard

“There is no question that, if you look at name recognition and celebrity, my opponent is far-and-away ahead. I think that if you put my beliefs in one column and her positions in another column, I am almost convinced that a majority of the people in the Democratic Party would support my beliefs.”

People Ifs Thinking Looks Names Belief Party Support Position Majority Democratic Convinced Recognition Opponents Democratic Party Columns

Author:Jonathan Tasini

“If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.”

Ifs Believe Belief My Own Opinion Doubt Plenty

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.”

“A philosopher may try to prove the truth of something he believed before he was a philosopher, but even if he succeeds, his belief never regain the untroubled character, and the settled place in his mind, which it had at first.”

Ifs Trying Mind Firsts May Character Belief Succeed Prove Philosopher

Author:David Stove

“Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views.”

Ifs Belief Left Views Let Me Bread Chasing

Author:Nikolai Gogol

“...belief has a second edge. If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one - probably a child - who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.”

Ifs Mind Believe May Children Real Home Belief Imagine Stupid Thousand Ten Edges Woods Vampire Stakes Peasants Medieval

Author:Stephen King

“Science tells us what we can know but what we can know is little and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive of many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.”

Source: History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition

“My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts (as well as unable to take such a course of action) if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival. In either case, the enterprise of knowledge is consistent with both science and religion, and is essential for the welfare of the human species.”

Source: Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science

“If you think a certain thought long enough and hard enough, it becomes a fixed belief and you will find yourself behaving on the outside in a manner consistent with it.”

Ifs Thinking Long Hard Enough Certain Belief Fixed Consistent Finding Yourself

Author:Brian Tracy

“Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power.”

Ifs Giving Long Certain Belief Church Fire Essentials Salvation Chains Orthodox Heresy Whips Orthodox Church Whips And Chains

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“There is no Christian Gospel if history simply unwinds into a meaningless puddle, if the cosmos simply escapes into a cataclysmic black hole, or if the universe finally dies of exhausted energy. Without belief in a biblical eschatology, there is no Christian hope. Without a sense of perfect moral judgment in the end, the human heart is homeless.”

“Contrary to common belief, it is not true that if you cut a worm-fisherman in half, each half will grow into a complete fisherman. For which we should all be eternally grateful.”

Ifs Should Belief Grows Common Half Cutting Sea Rivers Grateful Fishes Contrary Boat Lakes Fishing Worms Fisherman

Author:Ed Zern

“However good an English team is, they will always have an additional advantage. It is that European players know that their English opponents will come at them in the belief they will win, and they can always be guaranteed never to stop fighting. They have a natural aggression that they are born with. If it ever goes, English football will lose its most valuable dimension.”

Ifs Knows Fighting Winning Belief Born Loses Natural Player Team Football Advantage Valuable Soccer Analysis Opponents Dimensions Aggression English Football

Author:Johan Cruijff

“When I sent out a casual and nonscientific poll of my own to a wide cast of acquaintances, friends and colleagues, I was surprised, but not really, to learn that maybe 60 percent claimed a belief in a God of some sort, including people I would have bet were unregenerate skeptics. Others just shrugged. They don't think about this stuff. It doesn't matter to them. They can't know, they won't beat themselves up trying to know and for that matter they don't care if their kids believe or not.”

“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.”

Source: The Origins of Theosophy (Routledge Revivals): Annie Besant - The Atheist Years

“If there is a soul, what is it, and where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of its residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.”

Source: Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays

“Pascal makes no attempt in this most famous argument to show that his Roman Catholicism is true or probably true. The reasons which he suggests for making the recommended bet on his particular faith are reasons in the sense of motives rather than reasons in the sense of grounds. Conceding, if only for the sake of the present argument, that we can have no knowledge here, Pascal tries to justify as prudent a policy of systematic self-persuasion, rather than to provide grounds for thinking that the beliefs recommended are actually true.”

Ifs Thinking Trying Self Reason Shows Belief Atheism Policy Particular Argument Sake Positive Atheism Motive Justify Catholicism Persuasion Flew Systematic Prudent Roman Catholic Pascal

Author:Antony Flew

“I myself am not comfortable with the notion of secularists congregating in groups, except perhaps for defensive purposes: the last thing a secularist should wish to do is to act like a religion, with its rigid hierarchies, its suppression of divergent opinion, and, above all, its ruthless attempts (now mercifully inhibited by laws) to outlaw "heresy" by brute force. Opinions must be changed, one at a time if necessary, but if there are those who wish to persist in religious belief, they should certainly be allowed to do so.”

“He was extremely reticent in his religious sentiments, at least in all that he wrote. Allusions to his belief are rarely, if ever, to be met with in his correspondence.”

Ifs Belief Religious Atheism Mets Positive Atheism Sentiments Correspondence Allusion

Author:Daniel Coit Gilman

“Obviously, if theism is a belief in a God and atheism is a lack of a belief in a God, no third position or middle ground is possible. A person can either believe or not believe in a God. Therefore, our previous definition of atheism has made an impossibility out of the common usage of agnosticism to mean "neither affirming nor denying a belief in God."”

Source: An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism

“As I have already said, the belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous or all delusions. It becomes still more dangerous if it is coupled with the missionary zeal to enlighten the rest of the world, whether the rest of the world wishes to be enlightened or not. To refuse to embrace wholeheartedly a particular definition of reality, to dare to see the world differently can become a "think crime" in a truly Orwellian sense as we get steadily closer to 1984.”

Source: How real is real?: Confusion, disinformation, communication

“I've had moments in my life where it was all out on the table. Everything I had. I'm okay with that, because I had a strong belief that what I was doing other people could believe in it, too, if I can get it just right.”

People Ifs Believe I Can Moments Belief Strong Okay Tables

Author:Kevin Costner

“If you raise your standards but don't really believe you can meet them, you've already sabotaged yourself. You won't even try; you'll be lacking the sense of certainty that allows you to tap the deepest capacity that's within you... Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what's possible and impossible and what we can and can not do. They shape every action, every thought and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief systems is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives.”

“Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for cause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful”

Ifs Firsts Wells Long Self Universe Belief Causes Secret Successful Authority Tasks Constitution Secret To Success Self Trust

Book:The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I don't believe in god. I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in soul. I don't believe in anything. I think it's totally right for people to have their own beliefs if it makes them happy, but to me it's a pretty preposterous idea.”

People Ifs Thinking Believe Ideas Soul Belief Don't Believe Believe In God Afterlife

Author:Joaquin Phoenix

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Belief Quotes