Quotes About Belief

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told. The

The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree.

People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. And therein lies a fascinating dichotomy. "The universe always was," gets no respect as a legitimate answer to "What was around before the beginning?" But for many religious people, the answer, "God always was," is the obvious and pleasing answer to "What was around before God?

Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion.

If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.

Objective truths of science are not founded in belief systems. They are not established by the authority of leaders or the power of persuasion. Nor are they learned from repetition or gleaned from magical thinking. To deny objective truths is to be scientifically illiterate, not to be ideologically principled.

The urge to want some bit of information to be true often clouds our ability to assess why that information may be false.

WHAT IS NOW PROVED WAS ONCE ONLY IMAGIND —WILLIAM BLAKE

One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right, but not enough about the subject, to know you're wrong.

My confidence that there is a loving God who cares at all for your health or your longevity, based on what I see in the physical universe, is so low that it's not something that I would spend any time investing in, to try to explore any further about whether or not it's true. I'll let other people do that exploring. Read in the New Yorker, sometime in March, 2015

Around the world, varying belief systems lead to political differences that are not always resolved peacefully. The power and beauty of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brain spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.

People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe. What we do know, and what we can assert without further hesitation, is that the universe had a beginning.

The cosmic perspective is humble. The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious. The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small. The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.

Objective truths of science are not founded in belief systems. They are not established by the authority of leaders or the power of persuasion. Nor are they learned from repetition or gleaned from magical thinking. To deny objective truths is to be scientifically illiterate, not to be ideologically principled. After all that, you'd think only one definition for truth should exist in this world, but no.

Indeed, upon learning of a 1931 book entitled One Hundred Authors Against Einstein,†† he responded that if he were wrong, then only one would have been enough.

Do whatever it takes to avoid fooling yourself into believing that something is true when it is false, or that something is false when it is true.

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe it.

It's no secret that people will give their lives, or take the lives of others, in support of what they believe. Often the less actual evidence that exists in support of an ideology, the more likely a person is willing to die for the cause.

One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough to think you're right, but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong.

Leonardo da Vinci would be in full agreement: "The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinion.

upon learning of a 1931 book entitled One Hundred Authors Against Einstein,†† he responded that if he were wrong, then only one would have been enough.

The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.