Quotes About Belief

Belief in rule by an elite is no better than bigotry when ability is not the sole basis for admission to the circle of the elect.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Critisize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.

Faith is a continuation of reason.

Therefore, the church is not absolutely necessary as an object of faith, not even for us today, for then Abraham and the other prophets would not have given assent to those things which were revealed to them from God without any intervening help of the church.

The first act of religion, therefore, concerns those things which are communicated to us from God. The other concerns those things which we yield to God.

Everyone who understands the nature of God rightly necessarily knows that God is to be believed and hoped in, that he is to be loved and called upon, and to be heard in all things.

Faith is the virtue by which, clinging-to the faithfulness of God, we lean upon him, so that we may obtain what he gives to us.

29. The profession of the true Faith is the most essential note of the Church.

15. Therefore to believe in God, is in believing to cleave to God, to lean on God, to rest in God as in our all-sufficient life and salvation. Deut. 30, 20. by cleaving to him, for he is thy life.

25. Superstition is that whereby undue worship is yielded to God.

Doctrine is a Theological Axiom, either consisting in the express word of Scripture, or flowing from them by immediate consequence.

How many a world-embracing creed has sprung from a tiny contradiction in terms!

To the average intellect, nothing is so alluring as a paradox. The reason is simple: in accepting a paradox, the average intellect feels that it has risen above the average. Any fool can believe what is possible and probable, but it demands no ordinary gifts, whether mental or spiritual, to believe what is absurd.

To me, it seems that mankind can never achieve its highest potentialities till it has thrown off the incubus of historic (and prehistoric) religion.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I may not forget you.

Presumption has many forms; and it is worth considering, whether a great and good Being would most disapprove the presumption which expected too much from His goodness, or the presumption which dared positively to disbelieve His promise.

A religion without the Holy Ghost, though it had all the ordinances and all the doctrines of the New Testament, would certainly not be Christianity.

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

If you can dream it, you can become it.

Better limp all the way to heaven than not get there at all.

Someone with a coherent philosophy of life will know what in life is worth attaining, and because this person has spent time trying to attain the thing in life he believed to be worth attaining, he has probably attained it, to the extent that it was possible for him to do so. Consequently, when it comes time for him to die, he will not feel cheated. To the contrary, he will, in the words of Musonius, "be set free from the fear of death."2 Consider,

what upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things."3 Seneca shared this view—"It is not how the wrong is done that matters, but how it is taken

Epictetus: "Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the established order, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.

modern individuals rarely see the need to adopt a philosophy of life. They instead tend to spend their days working hard to be able to afford the latest consumer gadget, in the resolute belief that if only they buy enough stuff, they will have a life that is both meaningful and maximally fulfilling.