Best belief & intellectual Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape.”

Stories Shows Seems Belief Easy Fiction Study Shapes Intellectual Evidence Argument Moved Critical Nonfiction Skeptical Shields

Author:Jonathan Gottschall

“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.”

“Sam Harris fearlessly describes a moral and intellectual emergency precipitated by religious fantasies--misguided beliefs that create suffering, that rationalize violence, that have endangered our nation and our future. His argument for the morality, the honesty, and the humility of atheism is galvanizing. It is a relief that someone has spoken so frankly, with such passion yet such rationality. Now when the subject arises, as it inevitably does, I can simply say: Read Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation.”

“In certain circumstances where he experiments in new types of conduct by cooperating with his equals, the child is already an adult. There is an adult in every child and a child in every adult. ... There exist in the child certain attitudes and beliefs which intellectual development will more and more tend to eliminate: there are others which will acquire more and more importance. The later are not derived from the former but are partly antagonistic to them.”

Children Certain Belief Attitude Type Development Circumstances Intellectual Adults Importance Experiments Former Acquire Cooperating Intellectual Development

Book:The Moral Judgement of the Child

Source: The Moral Judgement of the Child

“I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.”

Made War Light Earth Belief Dark Mankind Position Produce Intellectual Spring Slave Corners Absurd Rejoice Reverse Globes Freeman Enquiry Liberality

Book:The Papers of George Washington: April-June 1789

Source: The Papers of George Washington: April-June 1789

“It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver.”

Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

“A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessments of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.”

“I was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.”

Kind Belief Heaven Intellectual Dumb Gus Disengagement

Book:The John Green Collection

Source: The John Green Collection

“There are, however, exceptions to this reliance on feelings as evidence of truth: if, for instance, your feelings lead to disbelief instead of belief, they're apt to be dismissed as some form of denial. This is not a common problem. Usually intellectualism, not feeling reality, is blamed for disbelief. But, some angel experts suggest, there may be emotional as well as intellectual barriers to belief: unwillingness to believe in angels can reflect low self-esteem.”

“And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.”

Belief Intellectual Musical Phrases Symphony Cadence Intellectual Life

Book:Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)

Source: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)

“I started by saying that one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problem of production has been solved. This illusion, I suggested, is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which is has been erected. To use the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income.”

Source: SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

“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.”

Ifs Hands Belief Intellectual Suicide Miserable Insanity Solipsism

Author:Kedar Joshi

“Awakening is waking up from the daytime dream and realizing that who you thought you were is not limited to thought, emotion or form. Beyond the imaginary seeker, beyond concepts and beliefs, there is a field of innocence and purity. We are this deep peace and sacredness, which is absolute and beyond all intellectual understanding. I invite you to recognize this Essence of Being and to directly realize the illusion of all psychological suffering due to misidentification, misperception of separation and attachment to conditioned thought.”

“But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these days it is easy to lose sight of that as, like our society itself, churches are becoming more politicized and polarized. Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.”

“There's this belief that some things can be taken seriously in an intellectual way, while some things are only entertainment or only a commodity. Or there's some kind of critical consensus that some things are "good," and some things are garbage, throwaway culture. And I think the difference between them, in a lot of ways, is actually much less than people think. Especially when you get down to how they affect the audience.”

People Thinking Way Kind Culture Belief Differences Audience Taken Intellectual Entertainment Critical Commodity Garbage Consensus

Author:Chuck Klosterman

“History will help to remedy intellectual faults such as excessive concentration on one line of thought, absence of understanding for other points of view, belief in simple solutions, lack of balance of mind, absence of an imaginative understanding.”

Mind Helping Belief Understanding Lines Simple Views Balance Intellectual Solutions Faults Point Of View Absence Concentration Remedy Imaginative One Line Simple Solutions

Author:Geoffrey Elton

“Stupid people like to delude themselves that while they may not be clever, they were at least able to compensate with feelings and insights denied to the intellectual....It was precisely this kind of false belief that made stupid people so stupid. The truth was the clever people had infinitely more resources from which to make the leaps of connection that the world called intuition. What was 'intelligence' after all, but the ability to read into things?”

People World Kind May Made Feelings Able Belief Ability Stupid Intellectual Resources Connections Insight Intuition Clever Leap Denied Stupid People

Author:Stephen Fry

“If religious belief be indeed so necessary to mankind, as we are continually assured that it is, there is great reason to lament, that the intellectual grounds of it should require to be backed by moral bribery or subornation of the understanding.”

Ifs Should Reason Belief Understanding Religious Moral Mankind Intellectual Assured Religious Belief Lament Bribery

Book:Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism

Source: Nature, the Utility of Religion, and Theism

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Belief Quotes