Quotes About Conviction

It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, there's something even better: evidence, logic, and argument.

But if I can be convinced and then through the work that we do together, the orchestra can really be convinced of the big sweep of that communication that the piece suggests, then the audience will get it and it will be a good experience for all of us.

And if you're a golfer and you watch a golf film and Matt Damon swing, and it's not great, then you're not going to believe in the golf story, you're not going to believe in the rest of the film. That's the whole movie, so if that swing looks like crap, the movie's crap.

When you're bringing an idea to fruition, there are two distinct phases: the skeptic phase and the evangelist phase. During the first phase, you have to be willing to ask the hardest questions - is this idea worth pursuing? But once you are convinced, you flip a switch. It's about getting it done.

I told everyone who was ready to listen that I had material with pentagonal symmetry. People just laughed at me.

Sometimes there is no sugar-coating it. Sometimes you have to challenge people's belief systems in a progressive way.

I knew it. I just knew it." We had been robbed after all.

As a politician who cherishes religious conviction in his personal sphere, but regards politics as a domain belonging outside religion, I believe that this view is seriously flawed.

The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology.

Leaders secure in their call will charge hell with a water pistol.

It takes a great deal of courage to stand alone even if you believe in something very strongly.

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.

Every profession has its traditions and its traditionalists. But the traditionalists in the pulpit are much more certain than the others that the Lord is on their side.

Men insist most vehemently upon their certainties when their hold upon them has been shaken.

we ought not meanwhile to make use of doubt in the conduct of life.

I was thus led to infer that the ground of our opinions is far more custom and example than any certain knowledge.

Those who possess the strongest reasoning and who best order their thoughts in order to make them clear and intelligible can always best persuade others of what they are proposing, even if they were to speak only Low Breton and had never learned rhetoric.

I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath.

You only fight well for causes you yourself have shaped, with which you identify—and burn.

It would be wrong to believe that the deceivers at this game are sharply separated from the deceived, that the world is neatly divided between the cold calculators and the innocent dupes. Everybody is a little of both; you must be a dupe of your own comedy to play it with conviction. The romantic and satanic vision of the cold calculator, of the totally lucid manipulator of other people's desires, is a more sophisticated version of the narcissistic illusion.

Le nom de « religiosité » ne conviendrait-il pas beaucoup mieux à un tel ensemble de vagues aspirations sentimentales, qu'une étrange illusion fait prendre pour de la « spiritualité » ?

The journey to move self love is often a quiet and long road. One without cheerleaders or confetti. Just you and your strong inner conviction to do things differently. There are both triumphs and failures on this road. And when you truly turn a corner you will bask in quiet victory, finally feeling the power you once thought was else where.

Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

It was the strangest feeling, to be convicted but not condemned. God had torn him down but then had slowly built him back up. He had crushed him and then restored him. The more honest Clay became, the more God revealed to him the condition of his heart—a heart born into darkness, a heart that had trusted in the ways of the world.