Quotes About Belief

Do the gods of different nations

his Calvinism would not outlast his undergraduate education, though its excision would be long and painful.

Oh, you're willing to concede God's existence, but that's not what I meant. I mean believe in him the way a mother means it when she says to her son, I believe in you. She's not saying she believes that he exists -- what is that worth? -- she's saying she believes in his future. She trusts that he'll do all the good that is in him to do. She puts the future in his hands. That's how she believes in him.

but the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they tell us is true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.

Only fools think that truth disappears when the boundaries of belief are crossed.

O Sehnor e descrente?' You're an unbeliever? 'So descredo no increivel.' I only disbelieve the unbelievable.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them—

I'm only a god, Vanya, not an expert.

The criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching them — noticing them — that was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement.

Even if that's just bullshit, sir, it's first-rate bullshit.

I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man.

God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so, perhaps ninety, with care in the mountains of Georgia, a hundred and thirty is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they thought they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time.

they were guilty of too much belief in a story they were told. Most people are able to hold most stories they're told in abeyance, to keep a little distance between the story and their inmost heart.

the fact that you have belonged to the human race more deeply and fully than most people could even imagine, find a way to believe that, and don't hide from life in the unfathomable, lightless depths of relativistic space.

And I never believe a man who says he never lies. A man always assumes that others are as virtuous as himself, said Taleswapper.

Witchcraft and wizardry had so effectively been denied that his own powers began to weaken, for there were few who contributed to his strength by invoking his name.

I know it as much as anyone knows anything. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.

So you choose to measure by the only standard that allows your life to be meaningless?

People always go. Always. They always believe they can make a better life than in the old world." "What the hell, maybe they can.

Perhaps that was why she was sure she had to go to Vigor Church and on to where Alvin was. Because fear told her to stay, but hope told her to go.

Most communities attempting to survive under irresistible pressure from a dominant culture develop a myth that allows them to believe they are somehow a special people. Chosen. Favored by the gods.

We all act because we're sure of what we want, and we believe that the actions we perform will get us what we want, but we never know anything for sure, and so all our rationales are invented to justify what we were going to do anyway before we thought of any reasons.

True believers in a cause often behaved in self-defeating ways because they expected other people to see the rightness of their cause if they just stated it clearly enough. As a result, they tipped their hand in every game and couldn't understand why everyone ganged up against them.

God must have so ordained this world, and that gave hope to the righteous no matter how bleak their cause.