Quotes About Belief

Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.

Faith and doubt both are needed — not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.

To believe in something to yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives it is the only way we can leave the future open.

I try not to return to these moments very often, for I end up lacerating my young self for not simply kissing the girl. I thought we had time. Despite everything, I believed somehow there was time. Love's first mistake. Perhaps love's only mistake.

The truth you find will always be replaced by someone else's.

Anthropology at that time was in transition, moving from the study of men dead and gone to the study of living people, and slowly letting go of the rigid belief that the natural and inevitable culmination of every society is the Western model.

things will be all right again, that I will pass through this time as I have passed through other times, that the vast and threatening blank ahead of me is a mere specter, that life is lighter and more playful than I'm giving it credit for.

My voice is nothing special, but when your mother tells you something about yourself, even if you've coaxed it out of her, it's hard not to always believe it. I sing to the geese. And I feel her. It's different from remembering her or yearning for her. I feel her near me. I don't know if she is the geese or the river or the sky or the moon. I don't know if she is outside of me or inside of me, but she is here. I feel her love for me. I feel my love reach her. A brief, easy exchange.

Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination. —Ruth Benedict

I was raised on science as other people are raised on God, or Gods, or the crocodile.

But he did not believe ordinary citizens created art. True art was anomalous; it was a rare mutation. It didn't happen simply because one willed it so. He thought it an utter and exasperating waste of an ordinary man's time.

Despite everything, I believed somehow there was time. Love's first mistake. Perhaps love's only mistake.

You don't struggle with these questions?" "No. But I've always thought my opinion was the right one. It's a small flaw I have." "An American flaw.

Always in her mind there had been the belief that somewhere on earth there was a better way to live, and that she would find it.

Because death is not tragic to them, not in the way it is to us,' I said. 'They mourn.' 'They feel sorrow, great sorrow. But it isn't tragic.' 'No, it isn't. They know their ancestors have a plan for them. There's no sense that it was wrong. Tragedy is based on this sense that there's been a terrible mistake, isn't it?' 'We're sort of big dramatic babies in comparison,

I love these geese. They make my chest feel tight and full and help me believe that things will be alright again, that I will pass through this time as I have passed through other times, that the vast and threatening blank ahead of me is a mere specter, that life is lighter and more playful than I'm giving it credit for. (5)

I believe you. I'm just terrified by what overenthusiasm might look like. If what I am seeing now is underenthusiasm.' 'If you're anything like Fen, you won't like it much.' I guessed I wasn't anything like Fen.

My voice is nothing special, but when your mother tells you something about yourself, even if you've coaxed it out of her, it's hard not to always believe it.

I just find it extraordinary that you think you have something to say.

If I smiled at her she smiled back, and there were times I half pretended, half believed, she was my wife.

what I'd become more interested in is how we believed we could be objective in any way at all, we who each came in with our own personal definitions of kindness, strength, masculinity, femininity, God, civilization, right and wrong.

Wives were always blamed for the death of their spouse, and it was believed that women could leave their sleeping bodies and do deadly deeds, and as a result, women were deeply feared.

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.