Quotes About Belief

The church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves."—Robert Ingersoll

correcting errors is a waste of time if the one you are correcting attributes his own beliefs to principled, unprejudiced inquiry, while attributing the beliefs of those who disagree with him to bias and ulterior motives.

When presented with this evidence, believers in the "hot hand" are likely to reject it because they "know better" from experience.

Psychologists call this natural tendency to be selective in both our memory and our perception confirmation bias. People with strong convictions often take confirmation bias to a level known as motivated reasoning. The more evidence one presents against their belief, the more motivated they become to refute the evidence and defend their conviction.

It's understandable that we would believe many things as children that our parents and others in our society have passed on to us as if they were absolute truths, even though they may be nothing but traditional prejudices. But why do we cling to what Mencken called the "palpably false" after we're old enough to think for ourselves?

It is not that hard to understand why most of us believe strongly in things that are palpably not true. We have a natural propensity to see causal connections where there are none and our beliefs are constantly reinforced by people we like and trust. For many people, one vivid and emotionally salient experience validated by a single neighbor or shopkeeper trumps a thousand randomized, double-blind, controlled scientific experiments.

Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf.

If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent if you believe the military, nothing is safe.

I was east of Skepticism and north of Faith, with an unsettled compass and variable winds. But I could offer up a prayer as well as the next man, and leave it to Heaven to judge the result.

A man who submits himself wholeheartedly to God might handle them and not be harmed. That was the faith my father had professed. Certainly he trusted God, in his own case, and believed God manifested Himself in the rolled eyes of his congregants and in their babble of incomprehensible tongues. Trust and be saved, was his philosophy. And yet in the end it was the snakes that killed him. I wondered which element of the calculation had ultimately failed him—human faith or divine patience.

Superstition...is what we call the miracles we don't approve of.

I do know, however, that men become bigger-hearted and better lovers once they get the suspicion that their mistresses care less about them. When a man believes himself to be the one and only lover in a woman's life, he'll whistle and go his way.

It is the height of stupidity to believe that in the course of your short life, your few decades of consciousness, you can somehow rewire the configurations of your brain through technology and wishful thinking, overcoming the effect of six million years of development. To go against the grain might bring temporary distraction, but time will mercilessly expose your weakness and impatience.

For a long time I have not said what I believed, nor do I ever believe what I say, and if indeed sometimes I do happen to tell the truth, I hide it among so many lies that it is hard to find. Niccolò Machiavelli, in a letter to Francesco Gnicciardini, May 17, 1521

If you want to tell lies that will be believed, don't tell the truth that won't.

We will quote the Bible, refer to unverifiable statistics. Who can be persuaded by bags of air like that? Action and demonstration are much more powerful and meaningful

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view. What could be more objective or scientific? But because of the pleasure principle and its unconscious influence, we manage to find the evidence that confirms what we want to believe. This is known as confirmation bias.

Conviction Bias I believe in this idea so strongly. It must be true.

Debes creer en algo, y con tal firmeza que anime todos tus gestos y encienda tu mirada. Un prerrequisito de la creencia ardiente es una gran causa que junte a las personas, una cruzada.

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. WALTER BENJAMIN, 1892-1940

La gente está cada vez más aislada, y ansía experiencias colectivas. Permite que tu ferviente y contagiosa fe, en prácticamente todo, le dé algo en qué creer.

No pienses que lo que se te dificulta es humanamente imposible; y si es humanamente posible, considéralo a tu alcance. –MARCO AURELIO A

Quien pregunta a un adivino cuál será su futuro, sin querer ignora una intuición interior de las cosas por venir, que es mil veces más exacta que cualquier cosa que el adivino pueda decirle. WALTER BENJAMIN, 1892-1940

People have a desperate need to believe in something and they will find it anywhere. Polls have revealed increasing numbers believing in ghosts and spirits in the 21st century. As long as there are humans; the irrational will find its voices and means of spreading. Rationality is something to be acquired by individuals, not mass movements. Feeling superior is a sure sign that the irrational is at work.