Quotes About Belief

When you're young you do think that things last forever. Unfortunately, they don't.

That is what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.

every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling. So if a war comes, and the Church is on one side of it, we must be on the other, no matter what strange allies we find ourselves bound to.

Philip Pullman

There are some themes, some subjects, too large for adult fiction; they can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book. - Carnegie Medal Acceptance Speech

Una verdad referida con mala fe es peor que todas las mentiras. William Blake

Lyra was in tears. Her dear, her brave one, her fearless defender, was going to die, and she would not do him the treachery of looking away, for if he looked at her he must see her shining eyes and their love and belief, not a face hidden in cowardice or a shoulder fearfully turned away.

Whatever Mal says, I believe. So take that fucking smile off your face, you.

command, Your Eminence. You have only to

When we were alive, they told us that when we died we'd go to heaven. And they said that heaven was a place of joy and glory and we would spend eternity in the company of saints and angels praising the Almighty, in a state of bliss. That's what they said. And that's what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us, and we never knew.

When you're young, you do think that things last forever

I can't do that anymore. That was just fancy. I was spinning tales out of the air, nothing more than that; there was nothing solid in them. Maybe Pan was right, and I haven't got a real imagination. I was bullshitting.

Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction. So

La religión cristiana es un error muy poderoso y convincente, eso es todo.

Phantoms. Ghasts of this kind or that. Emissaries of the Evil One. Do you believe that? Of course. It would be an intellectual failure to do anything else.

No, pero dejé de creer que existían un poder benéfico y un poder malévolo que estaba fuera de nosotros. Y me convencí de que el bien y el mal solo designan las acciones de las personas, no lo que estas son. Solo podemos decir que esta es una buena acción porque beneficia a alguien, y que esa otra es una mala acción porque perjudica a alguien. Las personas son demasiado complejas para ponerles simples etiquetas.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair.

Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.

Themes that are too large for adult fiction can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book - Philip Pullman (Hunt and Lenz, 2001, p. 122 as cited by Hunt, 2005, p. 204)

When we are born we are magical and loving and full of wonder. But darkness and ignorance surround us at every corner. Until the day someone calls us a monster or a devil and we believe them.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.

It's a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, Momma, do we believe in winter?

a father for whom everything is an unshakable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between, a father whose compound of ambitions, biases, and beliefs is so unruffled by careful thinking that he isn't as easy to escape from as he seems. Limited men with limitless energy; men quick to be friendly and quick to be fed up; men for whom the most serious thing in life is to keep going despite everything. And we were their sons. It was our job to love them.

Look, everything the Communists say about capitalism is true, and everything the capitalists say about Communism is true. The difference is, our system works because it's based on the truth about people's selfishness, and theirs doesn't because it's based on a fairy tale about people's brotherhood. It's such a crazy fairy tale they've got to take people and put them in Siberia in order to get them to believe it.