Quotes About Belief

I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come

Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away.

I refuse to be labeled immoral merely because I am godless.

It seems to me a case of negligence if, after becoming firm in our faith, we do not strive to understand what we believe.

Si Dios no existe, todo queda permitido.» FIODOR DOSTOIEVSKI

In Plato and in many Greek tragedies we learn that the Athenians did not seem to believe in rewards and punishments after death. 'In fact, they do not seem to have expected very much at all. "After death every man is earth and shadow: nothing goes to nothing".' (This is a character in one of Euripides' plays.) In Plato's Phaedo, Simmias betrays his worry that at his death his soul will be scattered 'and this is their end'.52

People put a lot less effort into picking apart evidence that confirms what they already believe.

we learned to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favors the paranoid.

IF YOU ARE GIVEN A CHOICE, YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE ACTED FREELY.

What do you think vision is?" she asked him. "You don't see a fraction of the things that surround you, and at least half the things you do see are deceptive. Hell, color doesn't even exist outside your own head. Vision's just plain wrong; it only persists because it works. If you're going to dismiss the idea of God, you better stop believing your own eyes in the bargain.

Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why

Bad eyes are only one bane of clear vision: bad assumptions

Comforting lies get far too easy with practice.

REALITY IS THAT WHICH, WHEN YOU STOP BELIEVING IN IT, DOESN'T GO AWAY. —PHILIP K. DICK

They're not gods," Brüks reminded him softly. "Not yet." "Not ever." "That's denial." "Better than genuflection.

Earlier generations had worshipped malign and capricious spirits. Ours put its faith in an ordered universe.

once you recognize that every human model of reality is fundamentally unreal, then it all just comes down to which one works best.

If believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metaphorical little heart.

Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world that poses no threat?

Truth had never been a priority. If believing a lie kept the genes proliferating, the system would believe that lie with all its heart.

envisage the artist as a focal point in a three-way interplay between the individual soul, the outer physical world of nature, and the collective belief system of his society.

Consider the joke about the miserly farmer who fed his longsuffering cow less and less each day; but just when he thought that he had weaned the cow from eating altogether, the unfortunate animal died . . . showing that we do not need as many gods as early man believed does not show that we need no gods at all; that must be argued on its own merits.57

properly basic belief' is any belief that's rational to hold without its being based on any other beliefs