Quotes About Belief

Humans make a machine, and then fool themselves into believing that their own brains are no better than the machines. This allows them to believe that their creation, the computer, is as brilliant as their own minds. But it's a ridiculous self-deception. Computers aren't even in the same league.

So he re-entered the prayer that he thought he had closed, and added the phrase that he had deliberately left out when he was on his knees: Thy will be done.

It may not be the happiness we had before, it may feel like a lesser version of it for a time, we may not even feel it some days at all. But we have to believe more will come. We have to hope.

Maybe not a home. Maybe that won't come until later. But I believe it will come, Mar. With your brains in this operation, how could it not?" Edimar

If I believe that, if I accept that, then I've got to sit back and watch while all the opportunities vanish, and then when I'm old enough it's too late.

Anton: "You're asking me?" Sister Carlotta: "God not being convenient, I ask a fellow mortal.

Why did he hesitate? He finally admitted to himself that he was like an American child who was almost completely certain about Santa Claus, but dared not ask for fear the answer would lead to the end of the annual largesse of Christmas.

think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

calling a man a god did not elevate the man, it only diminished the idea of godhood.

Ender was a destroyer, but what he destroyed was illusion, and the illusion had to die.

You consider everything impossible unless you want it, and then it already belongs to you, in which case anyone who stands in your way is a thief.

Christianity and Islam were willing to accept rewards in heaven for their sacrifice," said Valentine. "Then they were all selfish pigs

Faith is not to blindly believe, son. Faith is action. It's doing something. It's creating what we need and believing that God will be merciful enough to grant it in his time.

Ivan couldn't think of a religion that was any damn good at making utter truthtellers out of its practitioners. Maybe the Quakers were truly plainspoken at one time, but even they managed to squeeze out a Richard Nixon after a few hundred years of suppressing their human propinquity for untruth.

He doubts everything, and contests each point of theology as if it were required to meet the same tests of logic and consistency that prevail in the world of science." "In other words, he expects your doctrines to make sense.

And that's as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it's true. When we're that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it.

And that's as sure as we ever are of anything. We believe it enough to act as though it's true. When we're that sure, we call it knowledge. Facts. We bet our lives on it." "I guess that's what you're doing. Betting your life on her being what you think she is.

And it might also be that God had nothing to do with it, that it was just the moment that it would have happened anyway, whether she prayed or not.

Lack of truthfulness doesn't weaken a story if you can get enough people to believe the lie.

Still, she said nothing, because his words came from God, and hers from grief. To him, it was as if what the Lord had promised were already fulfilled; he thought of himself as a man with many children, and it didn't occur to him that she did not live in that world.

It's all part of their system of totems. We've always tried to play along with it, and act as if we believed it.' 'How condescending of you,' said Ender. 'It's standard anthropological practice,' said Miro. 'You're so busy pretending to believe them, there isn't a chance in the world you could learn anything from them.

when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.

But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison.

but Ender knew that lies could not last long in America. So he believed.