Quotes About Conviction

I am quite willing to be the blind instrument of higher ends. To give one's life for the cause is nothing. But to have one's illusions destroyed - that is really almost more than one can bear.

You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense... Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history.

but heavens! how that man could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith—don't you see?—he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything. He would have been a splendid Ã¢â'¬Å"leader of an extreme party.' 'What party?' I asked. 'Any party,' answered the other. 'He was an—an—extremist.

Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags—rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.

And in this case his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love, has an eloquence of its own.

To destroy public faith in legality was the imperfect formula of his pedantic fanaticism; but the subconscious conviction that the framework of an established social order cannot be effectually shattered except by some form of collective or individual violence was precise and correct.  He was a moral agent—that was settled in his mind.

If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars, he said.

The man up there raged aloud in two languages, and with a sincerity in his fury that almost convinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the harmony of the universe

He became a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as others do through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character — with deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped

Surely there can't be so many countries worth dying for.' Anything worth living for,' said Nately, 'is worth dying for.' And anything worth dying for,' answered the sacrilegious old man, 'is certainly worth living for.

As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.

But Yossarian knew he was right, because, as he explained to Clevinger, to the best of his knowledge he had never been wrong.

Because it's better to die on one's feet that+n live on one's knees, Nately retorted with triumphant and lofty convivtion. I guess you've heard that saying before. Yes, I certainly have, mused the treacherous old man, smiling again. But I'm afraid you have it backward. It is better to live on one's feet than die on one's knees.

Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for.

We have no ideas, and they're pretty firm.

Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering and pale. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.

There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.

Clevinger was guilty, of course, or he would not have been accused, and since the only way to prove it was to find him guilty, it was their patriotic duty to do so.

And anything worth dying for," answered the sacrilegious old man, "is certainly worth living for.

There was in Madison's critical assessment of the state governments a discernible antidemocratic ethos rooted in the conviction that political popularity generated a toxic chemistry of appeasement and demagoguery that privileged popular whim and short-term interests at the expense of the long-term public interest.

creation: "If I could not go to heaven but with a party," proclaimed Thomas Jefferson, "I would not go there at all."1

Mr. Henry had without a doubt the greatest power to persuade, [but] Mr. Madison had the great power to convince.

We're all faced with moments when we must choose between the path of convenience or conviction.