Quotes About Beliefs

Religious moderates are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in our world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed.

we are confronted by people who hold beliefs for which there is no rational justification

Religious unreason should acquire and even greater stigma in our discourse, given that it remains among the principal causes of armed conflict in our world. Before you can get to the end of this paragraph, another person will probably die because of what someone else believes about God. Perhaps it is time we demanded that our fellow human beings had better reasons for maintaining their religious differences, if such reasons even exist

ALTHOUGH many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them.

Our present policy on human stem cells has been shaped by beliefs that are divorced from every reasonable intuition we might form about the possible experience of living systems.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.

The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion.

Every thought, feeling, choice, and conclusion projects your inner light. This is the energetic essence of who you are and the resonance of your most dominant self. As a result, the source of your electromagnetic power is found in your strongest emotions, habitual behaviors, and most deeply held beliefs.

From something as simple as what goes in to a good meatloaf to the not so simple - religion, culture, how you should vote, every damn thing you think or believe, your reactions, your behavior - were partially shaped by who and what your parents were.

But she did believe that the fundamentals of most people remained the same throughout their lifetimes. People who were generous usually remained generous, unless life taught them not to be. And people who saw the world through the prism of their own needs first and foremost would always be that way.

Idealists are the cruelest monsters of them all.

about perceptions is that you shouldn't hesitate to modify your perceptions to whatever makes you happy, because you're probably wrong about the underlying nature of reality anyway.

Mental prison: The illusions and unproductive thinking that limit our ability to see the world clearly and act upon it rationally.

relativism refers to an ethical system in which right and wrong are not absolute and unchanging but relative to one's culture (cultural relativism) or one's own personal preferences (moral subjectivism).

I respect your right to hold your religious beliefs, and if they help you, I think that's great. I would, however, like to inform you that you are a raving kook.

Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts pass by never to return.

Some parents do not want to impose religious training upon their children, preferring instead to let them make up their own minds when they come of age. This stance is only superficially "liberal," for it deprives the children of any criteria for judging. The distinctive feature of Unitarian Universalist education is that young people are introduced to many religious traditions, challenged to formulate their own beliefs, and encouraged to respect the beliefs of others.

Ours is a non-creedal church—not because we have no beliefs, but because we will not be restrained in our beliefs.

The human race is being reprogrammed. Young people everywhere suddenly became pacifists in the 1960s after a millennium of violence. Our world was invaded, but not by the hordes of Martians and Venusians envisioned by the flying-saucer believers. We were invaded by new ideas and a new inner structure that would help guide us to the anticipated crises of the 1990s.

The main information passed along to contactees is simply that the human body provides a host for a fragment of this undefinable soul energy. The major religions have been telling us this for thousands of years, pointing out that the human race supplies the shells for souls. Man's ego has demanded that he embellish this truth by adding the belief that his pitiful personality is worthy of preservation and that his memories and personality go along with the soul.

A boy of fifteen who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at twenty.

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations.

Beliefs are not some special category of idea sitting at a higher station of truth than our ordinary, everyday mortal thoughts. Beliefs are not neccesarily "the truth" at all. (Remember, there was a time everyone believed the earth was flat)

Protestants have developed theories according to which everything that matters to the religion is somehow present in the Bible, and some have even argued that nothing may be done or believed that the Bible does not explicitly sanction. This, I believe, is an abuse of these texts, which are deeply important for the Christian faith but cannot possibly bear the weight that is sometimes loaded upon them.