Quotes About Belief

If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident.

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power

The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole -- the church, party, nation -- and not to his fellow true believer.

The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ.

though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious.

To the child, the savage, and the Wall Street operator everything seems possible, hence their credulity.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. [...] The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

It is perhaps true that the criminal who embraces a holy cause is more ready to risk his life and go to extremes in its defense than people who are awed by the sanctity of life and property.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a G-d, but never without belief in a devil. Usually, the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.

For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image.

All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed.

It is the true believer's ability to "shut his eyes and stop his ears" to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence.

in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil.

Belief passes, but to have believed never passes.     18

A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. People

Montaigne: "All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice. I should not speak so boldly if it were my due to be believed." PART 1

Pascal was of the opinion that "one was well-minded to understand holy writ when one hated oneself."20 There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity

The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another. He cannot be convinced but only converted.

Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move.

The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.

Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.