Quotes About Belief

O bien uno cree en un Dios único y omnipotente o bien cree en dos poderes opuestos, ninguno de ellos omnipotente. Aún así los humanos poseen una maravillosa capacidad para creer en contradicciones.

Assim, o monoteísmo explica a ordem, mas não o mal. O dualismo oferece uma explicação para o mal, mas não para a questão da ordem. Há uma maneira lógica de resolver essa charada: afirmar que há um único Deus onipotente que criou o universo inteiro – e Ele é um Deus maligno. Mas ninguém, em toda a história, teve estômago para tal crença.

Un gran número de extraños pueden cooperar con éxito si creen en mitos comunes. Cualquier cooperación humana a gran escala (ya sea un Estado moderno, una iglesia medieval, una ciudad antigua o una tribu arcaica) está establecida sobre mitos comunes que solo existen en la imaginación colectiva de la gente.

If you told people in the Middle Ages that within a few centuries God will be dead, they would have been horrified. 'How can we live without God? Who will give life meaning and protect us from chaos?' Looking

El dinero es el más universal y más eficiente sistema de confianza mutua que jamás se haya inventado.

us. Christians and Muslims who could not agree on religious beliefs could nevertheless agree on a monetary belief, because whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any

nationalism promises that whoever dies for the nation will for ever live in its collective memory. Yet this promise is so fuzzy that even most nationalists do not really know what to make of it.

There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no lawn, no justice outside the common imagination of human beings

Just imagine how difficult it would've been to create churches, states or laws, if we could only speak about things that really exist, like lions or rivers

This is no kindergarten fairy tale, but an extremely powerful myth that continues to shape the lives of billions of humans and animals in the early twenty-first century. The belief that humans have eternal souls whereas animals are just evanescent bodies is a central pillar of our legal, political and economic system. It explains why, for example, it is perfectly okay for humans to kill animals for food, or even just for the fun of it.

We identify with the inner system that takes the crazy chaos of life and spins out of it seemingly logical and consistent yarns. It doesn't matter that the plot is full of lies and lacunas, and is rewritten again and again, so that today's story flatly contradicts yesterday's. The important thing is that we always retain the feeling that we have a single unchanging identity from birth to death (and perhaps even beyond).

To say that a social order is maintained by military force immediately raises the question: what maintains the military order? It is impossible to organise an army solely by coercion. At least some of the commanders and soldiers must truly believe in something, be it God, honour, motherland, manhood or money.

To say that a social order is maintained by military force immediately raises the question: what maintains the military order? It is impossible to organise an army solely by coercion. At least some of the commanders and soldiers must truly believe in something, be

All humanist sects believe that human experience is the supreme source of authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully when they believe in common myths

la religión ha sido la tercera gran unificadora de la humanidad, junto con el dinero y los imperios. Puesto

We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectivelyy.

This is why cynics don't build empires and why an imagined order can be maintained only if large segments of the population – and in particular large segments of the elite and the security forces – truly believe in it.

Until the Scientific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. They thought the golden age was in the past, and that the world was stagnant, if not deteriorating.

What I feel to be good – is good. What I feel to be bad – is bad.

Most likely, both the gossip theory and the there-is-a-lion-near-the-river theory are valid.

It is liberal politics that believes the voter knows best. Liberal art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal economics maintains that the customer is always right.

These are sets of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be as real and inviolable as gravity. 'If