Quotes About Beliefs

For Watts, then, while faith is unreserved openness to the truth—a refusal to reduce truth to what we already understand, beliefs are ideas we cling to because we wish they were true or want them to be true.

Faith before doubt: it's about correct beliefs. Faith after doubt: it's about revolutionary love.

We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods.

Poritrin nobles professed to follow gentle, bucolic Navachristianity, but their core beliefs did not extend to their daily lives. They had their festivals, and embraced religious trappings, but the Poritrin upper classes did little to demonstrate their true faith.

The Empire functions beyond mere laws," Paulus continued. "An equally strong foundation is the network of alliances, favors, and religious propaganda. Beliefs are more powerful than facts.

the next Age of Reason will not come easily in this time of magical beliefs and superstitious fear.

Beliefs are more powerful than facts." Leto stared through the thick sky at the magnificent, distant ship and frowned. It was often difficult to separate truth from fiction.…

We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods. —REVEREND MOTHER RAMALLO, Sayyadina of the Fremen

Every culture in the universe has a very different opinion about exactly when life begins. But we're all pretty much in agreement on when it's over.

Creeds/Confessions: What if we wrote new creeds that put love in the spotlight? Imagine if, instead of reciting a statement of beliefs, we spoke confessions of love, beginning with "We love" rather than "We believe.

Our beliefs control our bodies, our minds, and thus our lives...

human beings have a great capacity for sticking to false beliefs with great passion and tenacity

What is an example that will prove that you aren't lovable? Rejection? If someone rejects you—and he could only do that because you don't match his beliefs about how he wants the world to be—it has nothing to do with you. Only an inflated ego could say that it had anything to do with you.

I had a real life completely separate from beliefs, from the common reality made up of shared beliefs...

We used to think British people could never become Fascists, or Fascist collaborators. But they can. I suppose anybody can, given the right set of circumstances.

Why in the world are you a Republican?

The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them — the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status.

Anger at queries about our beliefs is the body's warning signal: here lies unexamined and probably dangerous doctrinal baggage.

It is certainly true that all beliefs and all myths are worthy of a respectful hearing. It is not true that all folk beliefs are equally valid - if we're talking not about an internal mindset, but about understanding of the external reality.

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

This is one of the reasons that the organized religions do not inspire me with confidence. Which leaders of the major faiths acknowledge that their beliefs might be incomplete or erroneous and establish institutes to uncover possible doctrinal deficiencies?

Science may have evicted ghosts and witches from our beliefs

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based – or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug – it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

Events and circumstances sometimes conspire against us; if we insist on inflexibility for the purpose of maintaining our beliefs, we end up compromising ourselves nevertheless. We salvage one set of principles only to forsake another.