Quotes About Belief

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.

It's one thing to be religious, but it's another thing to make religion your policy.

History would be far different if we did not tend to hear God most clearly when we think He is telling us exactly what it is we want to hear

I am often asked whether I am an optimist or a pessimist. My reply is, "I am an optimist who worries a lot." I continue to believe that the United States banked enough international goodwill in the interval between George Washington and Barack Obama to recover from the present embarrassment - but I am not sure how extensive or lasting the harm will be, hence the worries.

At a time like this with damage and disorder everywhere, no tale is too absurd to be believed and even decent people seek something on which to vent their anger.

Democracy is not only a form of state, it is not just something that is embodied in a constitution; democracy is a view of life, it requires a belief in human beings, in humanity. . . . I have already said that democracy is a discussion. But the real discussion is possible only if people trust each other and if they try fairly to find the truth.

Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so.

Good people do good things and bad people do bad things," I was told, "but for good people to do bad things, that takes religion.

This is the first rule of deception: repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible.

believe we can recognize truth when we see it, just not at first and not without ever relenting in our efforts to learn more.

Fascism feeds on social and economic grievances, including the belief that the people over there are receiving better treatment than they deserve while I'm not getting what I'm owed. It seems today that almost everyone has a grievance:

In Germany, belief that the American president can be counted on to do the right thing shrank from 86 percent under his predecessor to 11 percent under Trump. In France, the fall was from 84 percent to 14; in Japan, 74 to 24; in South Korea, 84 to 17.

I am an optimist who worries a lot.

Today, nearly two-thirds of the citizens in EU countries believe immigration has a harmful impact on their societies. Cosmopolitanism, once considered a virtue, is less in vogue than nativism.

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Believing takes practice.

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly.

We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.

It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.

But was a miracle still a miracle if it came too late?

When she returned, she was full of life, impassioned. She seemed to want change, within herself, between them, and she believed all things were possible. She said that the past was not static, our memories fold and bend, we change with every step taken into the future.

Was this a real story, Sparrow had wondered, or was it something like the book of records, an imagines survival?

If spoken sincerely enough, and he now spoke most sincerely, lies became truths to the people hungry to hear them.

It is funny," she said, "that even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father's halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.