Best belief & would-be Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Prior to his takeover of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was camping near Paris, giving daily news conferences to a fawning international press corps without a murmur of complaint to France from the United States about the disaster it was coddling in the incredibly naive liberal belief that this extremist cleric would be an improvement over the Shah.”

“Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.”

Should Facts Would Be Belief Moral Prove Acknowledge Assumption Dependent Factual Moral Beliefs

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others, that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the Wild West Show.”

Shows Would Be Belief Interest Development Decided West East Awakening Mediums Wild West Wild Wild West

Book:Buffalo Bill's Life Story: An Autobiography

Source: Buffalo Bill's Life Story: An Autobiography

“A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself.”

Firsts May Soul Would Be Turns Belief Consciousness Influence Modern Effects Holy Jew Impossibility Treason Millennials Up To Date Holy God

Book:There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction

Source: There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction

“I have a belief that if I wear my placenta in a necklace, there’s a possibility of me gaining second sight - like being psychic. I would be wearing it whether or not I was in the public eye.”

Ifs Would Be Eye Belief Possibility Sight Psychics Public Eye Necklaces Placenta

Author:Kesha

“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

“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

“The degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system... simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems.”

Whole Would Be Belief Given Virtue Taken Theory Degrees Relation Structure Property Simplicity Sensitive Hypothesis Conservatism Belief Systems Confirmation Metrics

Author:Jerry Fodor

“Mr. Chairman, speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at this issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

Men Looks Matter Facts Would Be Young Lying Order Belief Force Issues Policy Citizens Gay Men And Women Fellows Young Man Things To Do Right Thing Allowing Chairman Personal Beliefs

Author:Michael Mullen

“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

“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.”

“The fact is that I have lived with the belief that power, any kind of power, was the one thing forbidden to poets. ... Power requires that the inner person never be unmasked. No, we poets have to go naked. And since this is so, it is better that we stay private people; a naked public person would be rather ridiculous, what?”

People Kind Persons Facts Would Be Belief One Thing Poet Ridiculous Naked Forbidden

Book:Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel

Source: Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel

“Belief in God is almost universal and the effect of this belief is so vast that one is appalled at the thought of what social conditions would be if reverence for God were erased from every heart.”

Ifs Heart Would Be Belief Social Conditions Effects Universal Reverence Belief In God Social Conditions

Book:In His Image: By William Jennings Bryan

Source: In His Image: By William Jennings Bryan

“To put it as simply as possible: I am not a Muslim.[...] I do not accept the charge of apostacy, because I have never in my adult life affirmed any belief, and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from. The Islam I know states clearly that 'there can be no coercion in matters of religion'. The many Muslims I respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith purely by virtue of birth, and that a person who freely chose not to be a Muslim could therefore be put to death.”

Knows Persons Said Ideas Matter States Would Be Religion Belief Accepting Virtue Birth Adults Islam Can Not Coercion

Author:Salman Rushdie

“We should strengthen the faith of our people in their own future, the faith of every Canadian in Canada, and of every province in its sister province. This faith wrongs no one; burdens no one; menaces no one; dishonors no one; and, as it was said of old, faith moves mountains, so I venture reverently to express my own belief that if the difficulties of our future as a dominion were as high as the peaks of the Alps or Andes, yet that the pure patriotic faith of a united people would be all sufficient to overcome and ultimately to triumph over all such difficulties.”

“As an architect it is very important that you distinguish between different realities. There's the reality of the drawing and the reality of the building. So one could say, or at least it is the common belief that architecture has to be built; I always denied that, because ultimately it is based on an idea. I don't ever need a building to verify my idea. Of course, what with a building is more its vanity and actual physical experience. But I anticipate; I wouldn't even build it if I could not anticipate how it would be.”

Ifs Needs Important Ideas Different Reality Would Be Courses Belief Common Building Built Architecture Drawing Vanity If I Could Architect Denied Anticipate Verify Different Realities

Author:Raimund Abraham

“What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.”

Ifs Way May Seems Would Be Young Belief Atheism Balance Careful Positive Atheism Favors Unhappy Conclusion Odd Thinker Elders Free Thinkers

Book:The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery

Source: The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery

“I would be the last to deny that the greatest scientific pioneers belonged to an aristocracy of the spirit and were exceptionally intelligent, something that we as modest investigators will never attain, no matter how much we exert ourselves. Nevertheless ... I continue to believe that there is always room for anyone with average intelligence ... to utilize his energy and ... any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain, and that even the least gifted may, like the poorest land that has been well-cultivated and fertilized, produce an abundant harvest.”

“I speak "with absolute certainty" only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any "authority" let alone "divine revelation"!”

“God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, then, is built upon ignorance and hope.”

Would Be Religion Faith Belief Impossible Ignorance Built Definitions Have Faith

Book:More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality

Source: More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality

“It would be unfair to say that I prefer the back of a book to its contents, but it is true that the sight of a lot of books gives me the hope that I may some day read them, which sometimes develops into the belief that I have read them.”

Giving May Book Sometimes Would Be Belief Sight Give Me Unfair

Author:Kenneth Clark

“The ideal of having a real job that you risk your soul in and make good or be damned, belongs to the heroic age of capitalist enterprise, imbued with self-righteous beliefs about hard work, thrift, and public morals. Such an ideal might still have been mentioned in public fifty years ago; in our era of risk-insured semimonopolies and advertised vices it would be met with a ghastly stillness.”

Source: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

“The belief in a certain idea gives to the researcher the support for his work. Without this belief he would be lost in a sea of doubts and insufficiently verified proofs.”

Giving Ideas Would Be Certain Belief Lost Support Doubt Sea Proof Researchers

Author:Konrad Zuse

Belief Quotes

Related topics

Belief Quotes