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Belief Quotes

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Belief Quotes

“Religion was nearly dead because there was no longer real belief in future life; but something was struggling to take its place - service - social service - the ants creed, the bees creed.”

Real Belief Social Struggle Atheism Positive Atheism Creeds Bees Ants Social Service Future Life

Book:The Forsyte Saga Complete Edition: The Forsyte Saga + A Modern Comedy + End of the Chapter + On Forsyte ‘Change (A Prequel to Forsyte Saga): Complete Nine Novels

Source: The Forsyte Saga Complete Edition: The Forsyte Saga + A Modern Comedy + End of the Chapter + On Forsyte ‘Change (A Prequel to Forsyte Saga): Complete Nine Novels

“I have learned from Nature that dependence on unnatural beliefs weakens us in the struggle and shortens our breath for the race.”

Belief Race Struggle Atheism Breaths Positive Atheism I Have Learned Dependence Unnatural

Author:Luther Burbank

“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.”

“Theism is so confused and the sentences in which "God" appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.”

Belief Speak Impossible Atheism Positive Atheism Sentences Confused Incapable Unbelief Theism So Confused

Author:A.J. Ayer

“Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. There is a difference between believing there is no god and not believing there is a god - both are atheistic, though popular usage has ignored the latter.”

Believe Belief Differences Atheism Positive Atheism Latter Ignored There Is No God Atheistic Usage

Book:Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

Source: Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

“One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the alter of the great historical ideas - justice or progress or happiness of future generations... or emancipation of a nation or race or class... this is the belief that somewhere... there is a final solution.”

“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

“The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.”

“Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted. The request for the meaning of a religious belief is logically prior to the question of accepting that belief on faith or to the question of whether that belief constitutes knowledge.”

Knows Made Belief Religious Accepting Clear Atheism Positive Atheism Accepted Appeals Request Religious Belief

Author:William Blackstone

“One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.”

Men Belief Accepting Greater Atheism Stronger Constant Positive Atheism Characteristics Intolerance Tolerate Certitude

Book:Gustave Le Bon, the man and his works: a presentation with introduction, first translations into English, and edited extracts

Source: Gustave Le Bon, the man and his works: a presentation with introduction, first translations into English, and edited extracts

“The Chief Justice's ... main point seemed to be that the references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance aren't really religious and therefore are not that important - something I would think would offend Christians who think it should stay because it is religious and does matter. Too many Christians appear to be desperate to shore up their failing confidence in their own religious beliefs by having the government officially endorse those beliefs.”

“I don't have any beliefs or allegiances. I don't believe in this country, I don't believe in religion, or a god, and I don't believe in all these man-made institutional ideas.”

Men Believe Made Ideas Country Belief Atheism Don't Believe Positive Atheism Allegiance

Author:George Carlin

“It cannot be doubted that theistic belief is a comfort and a solace to those who hold it, and that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It cannot be doubted, at least, by many of us in this generation, who either profess it now, or received it in our childhood and have parted from it since with such searching trouble as only cradle-faiths can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead.”

Source: The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays

“Atheism, the absence of belief in gods, is a comparatively late phenomenon in history.”

Belief Atheism Late Positive Atheism Absence Phenomenon Belief In God

Author:Chapman Cohen

“Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.”

“We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.”

Knows Should Children Belief Religious Atheism Bears Positive Atheism Religious Belief Unwanted

Author:Walter Cronkite

“Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and his rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets.”

“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

“We in the United States are pluralistic respecting ultimate beliefs. Profound values exist apart from a devotion to a god. Indeed, those who discriminate against nonbelievers flout the principle of religious tolerance that they often profess.”

States Values Belief Religious United Principles United States Atheism Ultimate Profound Positive Atheism Tolerance Devotion Religious Tolerance

Author:Norman Dorsen

“In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.”

“I am influenced at the present time by far higher considerations and by a nobler idea of duty than I ever was when I held the Evangelical belief.”

Ideas Belief Atheism Duty Higher Positive Atheism Consideration Evangelical Present Time

Author:George Eliot

“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

“Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a binge but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.”

Persons Doe Ideas Facts Belief Existence Atheism Crime Atheist Positive Atheism Commit Fancy Incapable Insulting Blasphemy Binge

Author:George William Foote

“The soaring, imaginative minds of men, constructing lofty, shimmering piles of abstract thought, and taking as their postulate a revelation from God, gaveus relgions which coule not possible maintained without belief and obedience: ... we find them most permanent and changeless among people who make the least effort to swquare their beliefs with the laws of life.”

People Men Mind Law Belief Effort Atheism Positive Atheism Obedience Permanent Abstract Revelations Soar Imaginative Lofty Laws Of Life

Author:Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“"Atheist" is quite clear in its meaning of "somebody without a belief in God." It is more complex in its usage since it has often been used to blacken anyone with the slightest doubt about the teachings of religion.”

Used Belief Clear Doubt Atheism Teaching Complexes Atheist Positive Atheism Belief In God Usage

Book:Against the Faith: Essays on Deists, Skeptics, and Atheists

Source: Against the Faith: Essays on Deists, Skeptics, and Atheists

“Immortality is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings, that they knew it supernaturally; or that they knew those who knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.”

Men Belief Atheism Positive Atheism Immortality Grounded

Author:Thomas Hobbes

“The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.”

Men Humans Whole Stories Fall Belief Atheism Truth Is Positive Atheism Enlightened Human Intelligence Fall Of Man

Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.”

People Needs Giving Feels Real Universe Belief Existence Situation Wonder Atheism Security Angry Positive Atheism Like Me Fantastic Desperate Significance Clue Illusory

Book:The nature of the universe

Source: The nature of the universe

“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. This variety of terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind, which renders realities, or what is taken for such, more present to us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination.”

Source: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, etc. New edition

“There are those who feel an imperative need to believe, for whom the values of a belief are proportionate not to its truth, but to its definiteness. Incapable of either admitting the existence of contrary judgments or of suspending their own, they supply the place of knowledge by turning other men's conjectures into dogmas.”

Men Needs Feels Believe Values Belief Existence Atheism Judgment Positive Atheism Contrary Dogma Incapable Imperatives Admitting Conjecture

Author:C. E. M. Joad

“All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.”

Belief Atheism Argument Positive Atheism Paranormal Undecided

Author:Samuel Johnson

“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.”

“In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.”

Belief Fun Atheism Becoming Angel Climate Positive Atheism Burning Halls Flags Guardian Commonplace Legion Guardian Angel Creationism

Author:Wendy Kaminer

“This sort of behavior is left to the psychotic, dogmatic, fundamentalist believers you see on your TV everyday letting off bombs and killing people in the name of God. Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.”

People Mind Believe Names Belief Left Atheism Dangerous Tvs Behavior Killing Everyday Positive Atheism Believer Bombs Fundamentalist Belief In God Psychotic Dogmatic

Author:Maynard James Keenan

“It is difficult, none the less, for the ordinary man to cast off orthodox beliefs, for he is seldom allowed to hear the other side... Whereas the Christian view is pressed on him day in and day out.”

Men Christian Belief Difficult Sides Views Atheism Ordinary Casts Positive Atheism Orthodox Ordinary Man

Author:Margaret E. Knight

“It is a mistake to try to impose Christian beliefs on children and to make them the basis of moral training. The moral education of children is much too important a matter to be built on such foundations.”

Trying Children Important Matter Christian Belief Mistake Moral Atheism Training Built Bases Foundation Positive Atheism Moral Education

Author:Margaret E. Knight

“The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations.”

Mind Kind Made Belief Magic Atheism Type Argument Positive Atheism Defense Reasoning Unconscious Contradiction Acceptable Absurdity Penetrate Auras Pseudo

Author:Arthur Koestler

“Homo religiosus invents religious symbols, which he venerates and worships to save him from facing the finality of his death and dissolution. He devises paradise fictions to provide succor and support... In acts of supreme self-deception, at various times and in various places he has been willing to profess belief in the most incredible myths because of what they have promised him.”

Has Beens Self Belief Religious Fiction Support Atheism Willing Worship Incredibles Various Positive Atheism Myth Supreme Symbols Deception Paradise Self Deception Dissolution Finality

Author:Paul Kurtz

“The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.”

Knows Belief Atheism Promise Illusion Positive Atheism This Life Vain Immortality Reasonable Here And Now Skeptic

Book:The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal

Source: The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal

“God, once imagined to be an omnipresent force throughout the whole world of nature and man. has been increasingly tending to seem omniabsent. Everywhere, intelligent and educated people rely more and more on purely secular and scientific techniques for the solution of their problems. As science advances, belief in divine miracles and the efficacy of prayer becomes fainter and fainter.”

“An ideology can be defined as a group of beliefs that individuals borrow; most people borrow an ideology by identifying with a social group ... with a body of sacred documents and heroes.”

People Body Individual Belief Social Groups Atheism Hero Sacred Positive Atheism Ideology Defined Documents Identifying Social Groups

Author:Robert E Lane

“It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest.”

Real Country Seems Belief Atheism Bases Positive Atheism Profession Our Country Creeds Examination Bane

Book:The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell: Letters

Source: The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell: Letters

“Whatever his private beliefs and religious practice, a president must be the guardian of the laws which ensure America's religious diversity.”

America Law Belief President Religious Practice Atheism Diversity Positive Atheism Guardian Religious Diversity Religious Practices

Author:Walter F. Mondale

“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

“I feel like I am not an American in the eyes of my government because of their religious beliefs. I think that is un-American.”

Thinking Feels Government Eye Belief Religious Atheism Positive Atheism Religious Belief

Author:Michael Newdow

“The history of all times and nations teaches us that exactly in the naïve, unshakable belief, furnished by religion in active life of believers, originate the most intense motives for the most significant creative performance, not only in the field of arts and sciences but also in politics.”

Art Belief Nations Teach Creative Atheism Fields Performances Positive Atheism Active Believer Significant Intense All Time Motive Art And Science Unshakable Active Life

Author:Max Planck

“As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.”

“"Heresy," by the way, simply means "choice." It came to mean "thoughtcrime," implying it was blasphemy to presume to choose your own belief instead of swallowing what the bishops spoonfed you.”

Way Mean Choices Belief Atheism Positive Atheism Heresy Bishops Blasphemy Swallowing Implying

Author:Robert M. Price

“Heretics were most often bitterly persecuted for the their least deviation from accepted belief. It was precisely their obstinacy about trifles that irritated the righteous to madness.”

Belief Atheism Madness Positive Atheism Accepted Righteous Trifles Heretic Persecuted Irritated Obstinacy Deviation

Author:Lev Shestov

“The leap of faith is a strategic impasse that confronts every Christian in search of converts; and, as he sees the matter, there is no wrong way to become a Christian. It is the end that is importnat, not the means; it does not matter why you believe, so long as you believe. For the philosopher, in contrast, the paramount issue is the justification of belief, not the fact of belief itself.”

Way Believe Mean Long Doe Ends Matter Facts Christian Belief Issues Atheism Philosopher Positive Atheism Leap Contrast Justification Strategic Wrong Way Paramount Leap Of Faith Impasse

Author:George H. Smith