Quotes About Belief

All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Pocas cosas hay más peligrosas que un imperio que persigue su propio interés con la creencia de que le está haciendo un favor a la humanidad.

when a lie is repeated enough it becomes the truth!

the easiest thing of all is to deceive oneself, for what a man wishes, he generally believes to be true!

Women ignore history. Always think it will be different for them.

Some crazy man came up to me and started screaming at me about how he hated Allah, and before I could tell him that my family was part of the Catholic Church in India, he knifed me.

To put it aphoristically, no experience can feel meaningful to a nihilist—that is, to someone who has already decided that life is meaningless.

Moser was a great believer in checklists.

Better to trust the man who is frequently in error than the one who is never in doubt.

But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it.

At times I hardly can believe in you. Except this ache, this longing in my gut, this emptiness which theorizes you because if there is emptiness this deep, there must be fullness somewhere.

I loved Aphrodite from the first and steeped myself in her legends. My mother told me that in ancient times her rituals were bloody and cruel, but I only half believed it.

Who were my fictitious witches and what did they mean? Never ask that of yourself while writing. It may stop you cold. Just trust that if you believe in your characters, others will too. ... Whenever I thought too critically about my work, I couldn't write.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage-however often we are hurt as a result of it.

Why should a bad marriage have been so much more compelling than no marriage? Why had I clung to my misery so? Why did I believe it was all I had?

She explains that in the evolution of religions, the god of the old religion always becomes the devil of the new.

Perhaps the need to believe in demons is, in itself, the last resort of a mind desperate to project its evils outward.

Why is it so hard to be human being? I wonder. Why do we have to surrender? And to what? What if you refused to believe in a higher power? What if you thought you were the only trustworthy higher power? I have done that all my life and I know it doesn't work. You are not enough. Your will is not enough. But God? God is a pagan dream, conjured out of neediness.

L'ideale è un cauto ottimismo. Ma nel mio caso si tratta piuttosto di cauto pessimismo.

I don't believe in dying for causes. I don't believe in dying for poetry. Once I worshiped Keats for dying young. Now I think it's braver to die old.