Quotes About Belief

Comparing your beloved to a red, red rose might be fine if you're writing a poem, but these thinkers believed more exact language was needed to express the "truth"-a term, by the way, distilled from Icelandic, Swedish, Anglo-Saxon, and other non-English words meaning "believed" rather than certain.

A critic is a man who expects miracles.

In a world where carpenters get resurrected, everything is possible.

We have each other and for all I know that's what hope is.

You mean how do I know you are who you say you are?" Merle shrugged. "How do you know anybody is who they say they are?" She shook her head. "We lie to ourselves about who we see, we lie to ourselves about who we are. Then we buy our own lies and try to spend them as our lives.

God was a clever idea ... The human race came up with a winner there.

I find wholly baffling the widespread belief today that the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was an immoral act, even possibly a war crime to rank with Nazi genocide.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

What people think about God, Jesus Christ, and the Church cannot be separated from their own social and political status in a given society.

Racism. . . . fuelled by bitter assertions that no immigrant ever has the least respect for the environment in his adopted country because he never really believes it's his.

As editor of the largest newspaper in West Virginia, I scan hundreds of reports daily . . . and I am amazed by the frequency with which religion causes people to kill each other. It is a nearly universal pattern, undercutting the common assumption that religion makes people kind and tolerant.

I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.

People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.

If I could put it into a very few words, dear sir, I should say that our prevalent belief is in moderation. We inculcate the virtue of avoiding excesses of all kinds—even including, if you will pardon the paradox, excess of virtue itself.

The real conflict was not between Catholics and Protestants as such, Newman thought. Rather the enemy of both was religious Liberalism, whose essence was the denial of dogma and the exaltation of private judgment in matters of belief. Against this, Protestantism, because of its reliance on Scripture alone, provided no defense. The

One of the most powerful shocks of the Middle Passage is the collapse of our tacit contract with the universe–the assumption that if we act correctly, if we are of good heart and good intentions, things will work out. We assume a reciprocity with the universe. If we do our part, the universe will comply. Many ancient stories, including the Book of Job, painfully reveal the fact that there is no such contract, and everyone who goes through the Middle Passage is made aware of it.

a fear-driven spirituality will always diminish rather than enlarge.

The sentimental view of anything is apt to be ridiculous

Why, if I were to believe what everyone says about me, I would think myself quite, quite ugly. But I don't believe everyone, you see...I believe you because you are my friend. You think I'm beautiful, and so I am. —The Old One

You must not suppose that I would like you to profess religion without possessing it. A hypocrite is in my opinion one of the most detestable of beings. my opinion is, that every one should honestly and carefully investigate the Bible; and if he can believe it to be the word of God, to follow its teachings." - Brevet Major Thomas J. Jackson (1 March 1851)

When we take ourselves too seriously, we are at the risk of taking other things, including God, too lightly,

Nothing is True, All is Permitted

That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.

The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.