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Beliefs Quotes

Browse 598 quotes about Beliefs.

Beliefs Quotes

“The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation.”

InspirationTruthEarthScienceReligionContradictionWrongSkepticismBeliefsIdeaRevelationReligionsScepticismHypotheses
Book:Contact
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“If this journey has taught me anything, it is that sometimes in life you have to stand up for what you believe in, and for what you feel in your gut. Sure, it can be scary, and it requires some courage at times, but worthwhile things never come easy. And the best things in life always require a ‘never say die’ attitude.”

WisdomLife LessonsCourageBeliefsWillpowerBear GryllsRight Attitude
Book:Never Give Up: My Life in the Wild
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“The Federal President said, "Personally, I hate slavery and all it stands for." That took courage, in front of the audience he faced. He let the rebels' boos and hisses wash over him. When they slackened, he went on, "It is too late now, I think, to rescind the proclamation I issued. Too much has happened since. But if only the Southern states were to return to the Union, the Federal government would fully compensate former masters for their bondsmen's liberty-" The rebels laughed, loud and long. Lincoln hung his head. Caudell, strangely, found himself respecting the man. Anyone who clung to his principles strongly enough to refuse to abandon them even in complete defeat owned more sincerity than he had credited Lincoln with possessing.”

WisdomCourageBeliefs
Book:The Guns of the South
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“Humanity must focus on the future. The past has dug enough graves, and built enough madhouses for true believers. You don’t need to be defined by the past. Have the courage to become something new and wonderful.”

InspirationPastMotivationCourageFuturePresentBeliefsRebirthNew
Book:The Stairway to Consciousness: The Birth of Self-Awareness from Unconscious Archetypes
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“Somewhere I’d heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the bounty this world offers me. I profit from great harvests in life and believe in the importance of seasons.”

LifePleasureMoonSeasonsSuperstitionsBeliefsHabitsSuperstitionSuperstitiousRomanBountyFull MoonRoman PaynePayneHarvests
Book:Rooftop Soliloquy
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“Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence. But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence. And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence. Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe? Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?”

ReasonPhilosophyScienceEvidenceLogicSacredPhysicsObservationPopeBeliefsScripturesRevelationHoly ScripturesScience Vs ReligionHoly BooksJohn Paul IiContradictionsReligious BooksCircular ReasoningEmpiricalBegging The Question
Author:Alan Sokal
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“There is not the same willingness to admit that our desires and should be our own likewise, or that to possess impulses of our own, and of any strength, is anything but a peril and a snare. Yet desires and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being as beliefs and restraints; and strong impulses are only perilous when not properly balanced.”

DesireHuman NatureBalancePerfectionBeliefsRestraintUtilitarianismImpulses
Book:On Liberty
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“As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it.”

IdeasReasonScienceReligionEmotionKnowledgeMankindEthicsHumanismTheologyRationalInclusionBeliefsGodsScience And ReligionSupernaturalTranscendenceNew Religion
Author:Julian Huxley
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“In our foreign policy as in our own national life we need less fanfare, less stagecraft and circumventing. We need to talk sense, to speak the truth, to work harder and stay faithful to our fundamental beliefs. We are, each of us, responsible for our own actions, but we also know it has been bedrock in our American creed, that without cooperation, without all of us working together, pulling together, we can't make it.”

AmericaPoliticsWorkHonestyCooperationForeign PolicyBeliefs
Book:The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For
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“As you travel along the roads in life, there is a certain kind of peace that comes with knowing you're on the right path. And when you are faced with adversity, it challenges you but makes you stronger. The road is not always an easy route. Nevertheless, you must not allow your fears to keep you from reaching the destination.”

LoveLifeBelieveWisdomInspirationTruthHappinessJoyPeaceUnderstandingChallengesInspiringStrengthHonestyInspireLivingOvercomingAdversityCaringLiveDestinationBeliefsFears
Book:Sweet Destiny
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“When you speak, be sure of what you are speaking. Don't be rambling full of words that have no integrity or truth. Nobody wants to confide in you when they doubt what you say. If you are filled with untruths, those characteristics make it hard for anyone to believe in you.”

LoveInspirationalBelieveWisdomInspirationTruthHappinessJoyFaithPeaceUnderstandingInspiringHonestyInspireConfidenceIntegrityCaringCharacteristicsTruthfulLovingBeliefsFriendshipsTruthsHardshipsDout
Book:Sweet Destiny
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“Attention is what harnesses the primal creative power of our thoughts, emotions and beliefs (which, to oversimplify, combine to form our imagination) in such a way as to build tulpas and egregores, to make dreams come true, and even to create brave new worlds and realities.”

ImaginationAttentionCreativityMental HealthManifestationBeliefsPower Of Positive ThinkingPower Of AttentionTulpaEgregore
Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“Instead of speaking of beliefs, one must actually speak of truths, and that these truths were themselves products of the imagination. We are not creating a false idea of things. It is the truth of things that through the centuries has been so oddly constituted. Far from being the most simple realistic experience, truth is the most historical. There was a time when poets and historians invented royal dynasties all of a piece, complete with the name of each potentate and his genealogy. They were not forgers, nor were they acting in bad faith. They were simply following what was, at the time, the normal way of arriving at the truth. [...] I do not at all mean to say that the imagination will bring future truths to light and that it should reign; I mean, rather, that truths are already products of the imagination and that the imagination has always governed. It is imagination that rules, not reality, reason, or the ongoing work of the negative.”

FactsTruthBeliefImaginationFictionBeliefsFactFake NewsPost TruthFactish
Book:Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?
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“Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self.”

SelfReasonTruthCommunityIndividualityBeliefsOpinionsMisinformationFalse BeliefsFalse Opinions
Book:Healology
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