Quotes About Conviction

You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.

People want to see other people who have 'non-negotiables,' things for which they're willing to say, 'This is it' we take our stand right here.' That's a leadership quality which people respect.

No fight is harder than the struggle against the thing you want most to believe.

I'm a firm believer in God and I don't think he'd want me acting a certain way.

Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers; Unfaith is aught is want of faith in all.

I'm passionate. I find if I really believe something, I want to put my entire being behind it.

What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.

If people want go-along, get-along politics, I am not their guy.

It's a simple formula for me now, I don't play any song I don't want to play.

There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe.

If other people choose to believe because I do, great. I want to show people God's love through what I do and who I am. At the same time, I don't feel I need to pass out Bibles at the concert.

Some people don't want to be morally consistent. They just want to be tied to their one issue.

Everybody can doubt, and they are free to doubt, and I don't want to convince anyone.

Don't make a film if it can't be the film you want to make. It's a joke, and a sick joke, and it'll kill you.

We believe whatever we want to believe.

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.

Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

You`re learning, friend.` `The lessons of civilization.` `Just so. There`s little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.` `With words.` `Indeedm with words. Form an opinion, say it ofren enough and pretty soon everyone`s saying it right back at you, and then it becomes a conviction, fed by unreasoning anger and defended with a fight to the death.

A true believer, indeed, need never draw a weapon, need never rise in argument, or howl in fury, or make fists, or roll in a mob to crush some helpless, innocent enemy. A true believer needs none of those things. How much of the world insists on living this lie?

Liars will lie, and continue to do so, even beyond being caught out. They will lie, and in time, such liars will convince themselves, will in all self-righteousness divest the liars of culpability. Until comes a time when one final lie is voiced, the one that can only be answered by rage, by cold murder, and on that day, blood

And there was another truth, one that seemed on the surface to contradict the first one. The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god's name. And see in themselves no conflict, no matter how bloodstained their hands.

To be believed in is an obligation. Only by heeding that obligation are you made worthy of that belief.

Udinaas had known many for whom certainty was a god, the only god, no matter the cast of its features. And he had seen the manner in which such belief made the world simple, where all was divisible by the sharp cleaving of cold judgement, after which no mending was possible. He had seen such certainty, yet had never shared it.