Quotes About Conviction

Hence the uselessness of logic: no one ever convinced anybody by logic; and even logicians use logic only as a source of income. To convince a man, you must appeal to his self-interest, his desires, his will.

Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world—knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at—well; if not—well also; though not so well.

Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style which has most power to move men... It's object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and last hold of the imagination. (p.162/543)

that I think many things with the clearest conviction, . . . which I never have the courage to say; but I will never say anything which I do not think.

Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.

I know that I am not right about everything, and yet I am simultaneously convinced that I am. I believe these two things completely, and yet they are in catastrophic logical opposition to each other.

Exposure to a mixed body of evidence made both sides even more convinced of the fundamental soundness of their original beliefs.' Confirmation bias is profoundly human and it is appalling. When new information leads to an increase in ignorance, it is the opposite of learning, the death of wisdom.

His very use of parables shows that it was his conviction that the things of this world can lead a man's thoughts direct to God, if he will only see.

When i tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.

I was convinced I had overdrawn my balance of good fortune; that whatever haphazard benevolence the impassive universe might hold towards me was all but gone.

It's funny how, sometimes, one can be so convinced, so utterly certain, about something as entirely fickle as strong emotion

I believe in God, God. God, I believe in God.

It is the man who all his life has been self-convicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

He turned into the road at that slow and ponderous gallop, the two of them, man and beast, leaning a little stiffly forward as though in some juggernautish simulation of terrific speed though the actual speed itself was absent, as if in that cold and implacable and undeviating conviction of both omnipotence and clairvoyance of which they both partook known destination and speed were not necessary.

There are worse things than killing men, Bayard. There are worse things than being killed. Sometimes I think the finest thing that can happen to a man is to love something, a woman preferably, well, hard hard hard, then to die young because he believed what he could not help but believe and was what he could not (could not? would not) help but be.

Yet the motion of the saw has not faltered, as though it and the arm functioned in a tranquil conviction that rain was an illusion of the mind.

that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of silent superiority

There was something about his wolflike independence and even courage when the advantage was at least neutral which impressed strangers, as if they got from his latent ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest lay with his.

That was the voice of one who knew his own mind.

Truth is terrific, reality is even better, but believability is the best of all

The Bible's concern is not if we shall believe but what we shall believe.

The difference between faith and insanity is that faith is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence, whereas insanity is the ability to hold firmly to a conclusion that is incompatible with the evidence.

The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.