Quotes About Belief

according to rationality norms requiring only internal coherence, one can be perfectly consistent, and yet wrong about everything

Humans appear to have a need for certainty, a motivation to hold on to something rather than to question it. People with a high need for certainty are more prone to stereotypes than others and are less inclined to remember information that contradicts their stereotypes.3

As late as March 2008 Henry Paulson, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, declared: "Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible."25 Shortly thereafter, the entire economy was in turmoil. The risk models influencing Paulson's belief did not anticipate the scale of the bubble, similar to the turkey not anticipating the concept of Thanksgiving.

To this day, the testimony of two independent witnesses counts more than that of two who talked with each other beforehand, and the same holds for the testimony of a witness who did not know the defendant than that of his brother. But how to quantify these intuitions? That was the question that gave rise to degrees of belief expressed as probabilities.

Why? Why did we walk like meek sheep to the slaughter-house? Why did we not fight back? What had we to lose? Nothing but our lives. Why did we not run away and hide? We might have had a chance to survive. Why did we walk deliberately and obediently into their clutches? I know why. Because we had faith in humanity. Because we did not really think that human beings were capable of committing such crimes.

Never ask a surgeon whether you need an operation.

I have become involved with thinking and acting without the help of an ideology; I have nothing that helps me, no idea that I serve and am known for . . . no rules that regulate the how, no belief that gives me direction, no picture of the future, no instruction that produces an overly ordered mind. I acknowledge only what is and, accordingly, regard every description and configuration of that which we don't know as madness. Ideologues seduce and exploit uncertainty, legitimize war.

Fundamentalismus, so könnte man sagen, ist eine religiös versperrte Sicht auf die Welt.

Believe the Word, speak the Word, and act on the Word — it is a creative force. The Word is a double-edged sword. Often it places a demand on you to change attitudes and behaviors toward the person for whom you are praying.

I make my schedule around Your Word. I make the Word the final authority to settle all questions that confront me. I choose to agree with the Word of God, and I choose to disagree with any thoughts, conditions, or circumstances contrary to Your Word.

Don't be mental assenters—those who agree that the Bible is true but never act on it.

Sexual religion is the opiate of the supermenial.

It is better to trust the eyes rather than the ears.

Begin to weave and God will give the thread.

The eyes believe themselves the ears believe other people.

Many Western doctors hold the belief that we can improve everything, even natural childbirth in a healthy woman. This philosophy is the philosophy of people who think it deplorable that they were not consulted at the creation of Eve, because they would have done a better job.

The theater of the End is triangular, and in the eyes of apocalyptic believers on all three sides, the great drama has begun. The sound system is hope and fear; each time an actor speaks, his words reverberate wildly. Three scripts are being performed.

The deepest thing in any one is the conviction of the bad luck that follows boasting

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

Believe me for meat and for myself.

Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it.

Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it.

Man is free; but not unless he believes he is.