Quotes About Belief

It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that." —THOMAS NAGEL, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER (1937–), ETHICIST AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER

I hope there is no God" passage, Nagel wrote that "[I] am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers." I, too, know a great number of very bright and knowledgeable people who are believers. It sometimes makes me wonder if the skeptics have it backward: maybe I am just not wise enough to be a believer.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system." —WILLIAM JAMES, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER

In the past hundred years, since Logical Positivists like Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer have argued that the idea of a rational basis for ethics is as impossible as a rational basis for the existence of God—or of the Tooth Fairy

I wonder if I have a problem. I definitely have a tendency to seek spiritual inspiration from super-rational thinkers rather than from rabbis and priests and theologians.

In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.

A belief is not a fact; it is simply what we believe.

My own experience is that when I've lost something it was irreplaceable, it's usually replaced with something much better. The key to change is having faith that when we get rid of the old, something or someone even more magnificent will take its place.

I'm not Candide, nor Dr Pangloss, but we know that faith moves mountains.

So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy's needs but not their own? Like so many thinkers, Smith believed that people want just one thing—happiness—hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy.14 If and only if people hold this false belief will they do enough producing, procuring, and consuming to sustain their economies.

The bottom line is this: the brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.

the only thing these facts clearly show is that people tend to see what they want to see.

En fait, nous créons nos propres prisons. Celles-ci sont toujours à l´exacte dimension du regard que nous posons sur les situations auxquelles nous sommes confrontés.

Where you have no religion, you are sure to have no government, for as religion disappears, anarchy takes place and fixes a compleat Hell on earth till religion returns.

I believe in one God, the first and great cause of goodness. I also believe in Jesus Christ, the rebirth of the world. I also believe in the Holy Ghost, the comforter.

Posso fazer só mais uma pergunta? — Faça. — Karu-Sakaibê e Rairu existem de verdade? Minha avó olhou de soslaio para minha mãe, que escutava, atenta, a nossa conversa. Depois, me chamou bem pertinho dela e, encostando sua boca em meu ouvido, sussurrou: — Para quem precisa deles, sim; para quem não precisa, não.

and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

But Taft also believed that the citizen who obeys only laws that he endorses "is willing to govern, but not be governed"—willing, in other words, to destroy the rule of law.

Most of all, though, he was certain. Doubt did not cloud his days, nor did it disturb his dreams.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own set of facts.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.

You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own set of facts.