Quotes About Belief

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — ie., none to speak of

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith—it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.

With just a touch more self confidence and a liberal helping of ignorance I could have been a famous evangelist.

Robert A. Heinlein

Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either--he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days--since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other--with, of course, a day off each year for sheer solipsist debauchery.

The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable - from table tapping to the superiority of their own children - has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it --- especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.

But I have no beliefs. Belief gets in the way of learning.

They insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own, and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing, is one that they can't or won't entertain.

Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it—especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken.

Never appeal to a man's better nature. He may not have one.

Becky Vesey always gave good advice and she gave it with great conviction because she always believed it.

All revelations are personal, that's why all revelations are suspect.

I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones—by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether a universe or a smaller one.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Free will and predestination in one sentence and both true.

The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable—from table tapping to the superiority of their own children—has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it—especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.

A religion is sometimes a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong---and you are strong. The great trouble with religion---any religion---is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask in at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason---but one cannot have both

Nevertheless, her own political philosophy could have been stated baldly (which it never was) as a belief that men should rule the world and women should rule men.

She hesitated slightly. "I've seen what was called telekinesis with dice—but I'm no mathematician and I could not testify that what I saw was telekinesis." "Hell's bells, you wouldn't testify that the sun had risen if the day was cloudy.

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent – it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

Me, I had never been sure – only thing I was sure of was that Dr. Chan would not himself sit on a target. But he might not warn his old mother.