Quotes About Belief

Ammesso che la passione umana abbia la virtù d'innalzarsi al disopra di ogni assurdo, come si può sostenere che non abbia anche quella d'innalzarsi al disopra dei propri assurdi?

Y comprendí que la fuerza que alentaba tal esperanza no era más que esa convicción primitiva y mágica que todos tenemos, la convicción de que yo era el único que jamás moriría.

É um erro comum, próprio da infância, pensar que se se transformar o demónio em herói, o demónio fica satisfeito.

A todo el mundo le ocurre lo mismo, todos los seres humanos son iguales- replicó el viejo escritor, alzando la voz. -Pero creer lo contrario es el privilegio de la juventud.

É certo que me influenciaram e são mais ou menos responsáveis pelo acto que cometi em seguida; quero porém continuar a pensar que esse acto é apenas meu, e ficaria especialmente irritado se o imputassem à influência directa de alguma filosofia existente.

Hanio believed that his ideas were all rooted in meaninglessness and they blossomd into life at the very moment when meaning was created. For that reason, he never once initiated any action on the grounds that it was meaningful. People who ascribe meaning to their actions ended up staring meaninglessness in the face, in a state of frustration and hopelessness.

El autoengaño era mi último rayo de esperanza.

Hay ciertas ocasiones en las que los seres humanos creen que pueden conseguirlo todo. En estos momentos, cuando todo su ser está empapado de esta creencia, ven muchas cosas que normalmente son invisibles para los ojos humanos. Luego, pasado un tiempo, incluso después de haber descendido hasta el fondo del pozo de la memoria, estos momentos reviven unos instantes y de nuevo les recuerdan a los hombres la milagrosa plenitud de las penas y las alegrías del mundo.

NO! Don't force yourself to be alone! If you're alive, you can meet that person, somewhere, someday! The person that will be glad that you're alive! You can't... you can't want yourself to die!! So... live...

Having something worth dying for is never the same as willingness to die.

I am this space my body believes in.

Inside my skin, loving you, I am this space my body believes in. — Yuself Komunyakaa, from "Unnatural State of the Unicorn," Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems . (Wesleyan University Press 1993)

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.

While in the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.

Is it not tragic, for example, that while in the last World War almost everyone believed it was the war to end all wars and wanted to make it so, now in this Second World War almost no writer that I have read dares even suggest that this is the war to end all wars, or act on that belief? We have lost the courage to hope.

I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing.

The total number of people who understand relativistic time, even after eighty years since the advent of special relativity, is still much smaller than the number of people who believe in horoscopes.

You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.

How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.

Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination.

Morality doesn't mean 'following divine commands'. It means 'reducing suffering'. Hence in order to act morally, you don't need to believe in any myth or story. You just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering.

There are no gods, no nations, no money and no human rights, except in our collective imagination.