Quotes About Beliefs

Do FBI Agents and FBI directors have political beliefs? Sure they do. But they're not supposed to act on them.

While having a profound impact on the development of values is surely an important job of a good parent, force-feeding opinions to them is not.

Looks are just something on the surface. I think the electorate is more discerning than that. They want to know your stand on policies.

But there's no reason why we should abdicate our foundational principles because certain groups don't believe in them. You know, no majority should surrender its deeply held beliefs to those who don't believe in anything.

The mistake of all the religions is to look outside the world for explanations of the world, rather than rethinking the world itself, so that it offers up its own explanations for itself. The world itself must be self-explanatory.

if they're willing to recognize their patterns and change them. When they're willing to see the truth and alter their beliefs, they can create new opportunities for themselves and their descendants. Until then, they may feel as if they're victims in a world they can't control, trying to make more money but barely getting by.

We're tied to our heritage in a powerful way, and if we want to change our individual behavior or beliefs and heal ourselves, knowledge about our history becomes perhaps the most important data we need. In order to move forward, we must know what our forebears have passed on to us and what they've communicated to each other, both consciously and unconsciously, throughout the years.

If there is anything natural and inevitable about the aging process, it cannot be known until the chains of our old beliefs are broken.

Ideas at first considered outrageous or ridiculous or extreme gradually become what people think they've always believed. How the transformation happened is rarely remembered, in part because it's compromising: it recalls the mainstream when the mainstream was, say, rabidly homophobic or racist in a way it no longer is; and it recalls that power comes from the shadows and the margins, that our hope is in the dark around the edges, not the limelight of center stage. Our hope and often our power.

Seen from above, our life's this vast field of co-incidents, flowers blossoming from the decisions we've made based on suggestions we've accepted based on our belief that the appearances that surround us are true, or aren't.

We form opinions and then spend our entire lifetimes validating what we believe to be true.

You don't need to change your core beliefs or your deepest held positions. All you're doing is expanding your mind and opening your heart to new ideas.

Why would anybody be intimidated by mere words? I mean, neither I nor any other athiest that I know ever threatens violence. We never threaten to fly planes into skyscrapers. We never threaten suicide bombs. We are very gentle people. All we do is use words to talk about things like the cosmos, the origin of the universe, evolution, the origin of life. What's there to be frightened of? It's just an opinion.

My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.

Evil…doesn't mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to "the Christian majority's" private liking.

The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.

I think we should all wince when we hear a small child being labelled as belonging to some particular religion or another. Small children are too young to decide their views on the origins of the cosmos, or life and of morals. The very sound of the phrase 'Christian child' or 'Muslim child' should grate like fingernails on a blackboard.

Even without physical abduction, isn't it always a form of child abuse to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?

I think we should all wince when we hear a small child being labelled as belonging to some particular religion or another. Small children are too young to decide their views on the origins of the cosmos, of life and of morals. The very sound of the phrase Christian child or Muslim child should grate like fingernails on a blackboard.

Human beings are carried away by every new theory.

Symbols become sacred to people because they represent loyalties deeper than words can express. That's why they hate to see their symbols violated.

Any man who lives by his beliefs is to be admired, not mocked.

Emotions are a reflection of our physical state, our actions, beliefs, and what is going on around us. All of those things are constantly changing. Therefore, a normal state is one that constantly changes too.

The threads of many beliefs can run side by side; from time to time they tangle, and mesh into a stronger rope.