Quotes About Belief

Once a man forms an opinion, he starts interpreting facts in the light of that belief. He ceases to be an impartial judge of facts.

There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, 'Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams.' Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there.

the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith

Man must always imagine and believe in a second reality or a better world than the one that is given him by nature.

Even if men admit they are cowards, they still want to be saved. There is no harmonious development, no child-rearing program, no self-reliance that would take away from men their need for a beyond on which to base the meaning of their lives.

Consider, for instance, the recent war in Vietnam in which the United States was driven not by any realistic economic or political interest but by the overwhelming need to defeat "atheistic communism.

For centuries man lived in the belief that truth was slim and elusive and that once he found it the troubles of mankind would be over. And here we are in the closing decades of the 20th century, choking on truth.

Since the main task of human life is to become heroic and transcend death, every culture must provide its members with an intricate symbolic system that is covertly religious. This means that ideological conflicts between cultures are essentially battles between immortality projects, holy wars.

Cultural relativity is a pitiless weapon precisely because it sets our hero-systems up on end.

When Norman O. Brown said that Western society since Newton, no matter how scientific or secular it claims to be, is still as "religious" as any other, this is what he meant: "civilized" society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal.

In Christendom he too is a Christian, goes to church every Sunday, hears and understands the parson, yea, they understand one another; he dies; the parson introduces him into eternity for the price of $10—but a self he was not, and a self he did not become….

primitives often celebrate death—as Hocart and others have shown—because they believe that death is the ultimate promotion, the final ritual elevation to a higher form of life, to the enjoyment of eternity in some form.

The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count.

This is the most remarkable achievement of the Christian world picture: that it could take slaves, cripples, imbeciles, the simple and the mighty, and make them all secure heroes, simply by taking a step back from the world into another dimension of things, the dimension called heaven.

To be sure, primitives often celebrate death—as Hocart and others have shown—because they believe that death is the ultimate promotion, the final ritual elevation to a higher form of life, to the enjoyment of eternity in some form. Most modern Westerners have trouble believing this any more, which is what makes the fear of death so prominent a part of our psychological make-up.

When Norman O. Brown said that Western society since Newton, no matter how scientific or secular it claims to be, is still as religious as any other, this is what he meant: civilized society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense everything that man does is religious and heroic, and yet in danger of being fictitious and fallible.

Society provides the second line of defense against our natural impotence by creating a hero system that allows us to believe that we transcend death by participating in something of lasting worth.

ideological conflicts between cultures are essentially battles between immortality projects

I have been asked to take up a ghost, Carlyle began to explain. Then I don't believe in it, declared Carrados. Why not? Because it is a pushful, notoriety-loving ghost, or it would not have gone so far. Probably it wants to get into The Daily Mail.

A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.

There's no one thing that's true. It's all true.

Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.

It's silly not to hope. It's a sin he thought.

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.