c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I got to believe that the people who can really be trusted are those who have kept their promises, not under the influence of pleasing people, but under the influence of doing what they have devoted their lives to be doing!
— Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes
I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right.
— Henry Bessemer
You are guided!
— Shannon Walbran, Guided! How to Communicate with your Spirit Guides
Belief in oneself is an essential factor for success in life. It helpsyou surmount challenges on your road to success.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
I Think The Fact That A Human Being Created "Dettol" ... A Product Which Protects You 99%You Should Learn That Nothing In This World Can Do It 100% Except God.
— Cyc Jouzy
Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Those who believe they can move mountains, do. Those who believe they can't, cannot. Belief triggers the power to do.
— David J. Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big
In the end, it wasn't so much that there was an alternative narrative--there always was--but it came down to belief: Which one did you want to believe. Which one suited you best? Or, perhaps more to the point: Which one told the story you were already telling yourself?
— Michael Paterniti, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese
Don't degrade your soul to the extent of believing in curses. No man can curse you except your maker.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
When all help is stopped, when your loved ones started doubting your competence, when failure seems almost confirmed, but no matter what, if you make one more attempt, that final step will fetch you the victory.
— Amit Kalantri
Not only do I not know what I believe, but also I cannot know for sure that I believe. How can I define precisely what my attitude is toward something it cannot conceivably grasp? Can I be said to be in the relation of "belief," in any usual sense of that term, toward something that I cheerfully and readily acknowledge to be absolutely incomprehensible to me?(...) No man can be sure that he is in faith; and we can say of no man with certainty that he has or does not have faith. (...)Not only does faith always carry its opposite uncertainty within itself, but also this faith is never a static condition that is -had-, but a movement toward... And toward what? In the nature of the case we cannot state this "what." We cannot make a flat assertion about our faith like a simple assertion that we have blue eyes or are six feet tall. More than this, the affirmation of our faith can never be made in the simple indicative mood at all. The statement "I believe" can only be uttered as a prayer.
— William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization
There is something distinctly odd about the argument, however. Believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will. I can decide to go to church and I can decide to recite the Nicene Creed, and I can decide to swear on a stack of bibles that I believe every word inside them. But none of that can make me actually believe it if I don't. Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God. And the God that you claim to believe in had better not be of the omniscient kind or he'd see through the deception.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
God is one and there is but one God — all else is but the way the ignorant seek to put Gods into a form they can understand...
— Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
Having faith and belief in my inner guidance allows me to see the world in a way that strengthens that faith and belief and brings with it a life filled with welcomed expectation and awe.
— Charles F. Glassman
You don't have to eat the entire turd to know that it's not a crab cake.
— Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon
There's no safety in love. You risk the whole of life. But the great thing is to risk -to believe, and to risk everything for your belief.
— Elizabeth von Arnim, In the Mountains
When I wake up I go through an abbreviated process of mourning all over again. Plainly, there’s something within me that’s ready to believe in life after death. And it’s not the least bit interested in whether there’s any sober evidence for it.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Not one of you reflects, that you ought know your Gods before you worship them.
— Charles Southwell, An Apology for Atheism
A promise is something that has been given but not yet realized.
— Todd Stocker
There is a thin line between confidence, and arrogance. Sadly those people who have no confidence often confuse the two when confronted with a person who possesses belief in themselves.
— Sai Marie Johnson
The fact that it is sometimes difficult for me to believe in God doesn't mean that I deny his existence. If I stopped believing in him, I wouldn't be able to continue living.
— Rafael Ábalos, The Invisible Road
Atheism is a lack of belief...what about the powers of darkness, and that of light, will you trace both to nothing? Then you must have created yourself.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
That the earth in its course stood still; that a she-ass spoke; that a storm was quieted by a word, we do not believe, and we shall never again believe.
— Adolf von Harnack, What is Christianity?
The only valid faith today is disbelief.
— J.S.B. Morse, Now and at the Hour of Our Death
We are talking about a bet, remember, and Pascal wasn't claiming that his wager enjoyed anything but very long odds. Would you bet on God's valuing dishonestly faked belief (or even honest belief) over honest scepticism?
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
People believe in something, they themselves don’t know what it is, it isn’t a good thing, but it stands for a good thing. Because all belief stands for something that’s better. All belief comes from wanting to believe. People aren’t up to the real thing, though. So they substitute. And that harms them. It’s the problem of problems. I like it a lot.
— Michael Davidow, Split Thirty
However statistically improbable the entity you seek to explain by invoking a designer, the designer himself has got to be at least as improbable. God is the Ultimate Boeing 747.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Always believe.
— JohnA Passaro, 6 Minutes Wrestling With Life
You decide every moment of every day who you are and what you believe in.The good news is you get another chance to improve in another second.
— JohnA Passaro
Leonardo believed his research had thepotential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last year he categorically proved the existence ofan energy force that unites us all. He actually demonstrated that we are all physically connected… thatthe molecules in your body are intertwined with the molecules in mine… that there is a single forcemoving within all of us.” Langdon felt disconcerted. And the power of God shall unite us all. “Mr. Vetra actually found a wayto demonstrate that particles are connected?”“Conclusive evidence. A recent Scientific American article hailed New Physics as a surer path to Godthan religion itself.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
I am a religious man! The only thing is, that in my religion, I am the God!
— Tunk
No matter how hard we try, we can never understand everything that another person has gone through or why they might believe a certain way. It is possible for something to be right for you and something completely opposite be right for someone else.
— Daniel Willey
I believe that the best advocates of a certain issue are the ones that fully understand both sides
— Daniel Willey
Why is it you trust my daughter so much when others almost universally revile her?""I consider their disdain for her to be a recommendation," he said."She is a heretic.""She refused to join any of the devotaries because she did not believe in their teachings. Rather than compromise for the sake of appearances, she has been honest and has refused to make professions she does not believe. I find that a sign of honor.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic. Observe! You treat it like magic, wield it like magic, fear it like magic! Why should a body with more small circles of copper or silver or gold than anyone else have an easy life full of treats every day and sleeping in and other people bowing down? The little circles can't get up and fight a battle or make a supper so splendid you get full just by looking at it or build a house of a thousand gables. They can do those things because everyone agrees to give them power. If everyone agreed to stop giving power to pretty metals and started giving it to thumbnails or mushroom caps or roof shingles or first kisses or tears or hours or puffin feathers, those little circles would just lay there tarnishing in the rain and not making anyone bow their noses down to the ground or stick them up in the air.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
Can we believe that the real God, if there is one, ever ordered a man to be killed simply for making hair oil, or ointment? We are told in the thirtieth chapter of Exodus, that the Lord commanded Moses to take myrrh, cinnamon, sweet calamus, cassia, and olive oil, and make a holy ointment for the purpose of anointing the tabernacle, tables, candlesticks and other utensils, as well as Aaron and his sons; saying, at the same time, that whosoever compounded any like it, or whoever put any of it on a stranger, should be put to death. In the same chapter, the Lord furnishes Moses with a recipe for making a perfume, saying, that whoever should make any which smelled like it, should be cut off from his people. This, to me, sounds so unreasonable that I cannot believe it. Why should an infinite God care whether mankind made ointments and perfumes like his or not? Why should the Creator of all things threaten to kill a priest who approached his altar without having washed his hands and feet? These commandments and these penalties would disgrace the vainest tyrant that ever sat, by chance, upon a throne.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses
Belief made no difference to the truth.
— Diane Duane, Deep Wizardry
Theology is a superstition—Humanity a religion.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses
Suppose that members of a religious movement, such as Christianity, maintain that the existence of some powerful god and its goals or laws can be known through their scriptures, their prophets, or some special revelation. Suppose further that the evidence that is available to support the reliability of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations is weaker than that God is hypothetically capable of producing. That is, suppose that Christians maintain that Jesus was resurrected on the basis of the Gospels, or that God’s existence can be known through the Bible, or Muslims insist on the historical authenticity of the Koran. Could God, the almighty creator of the universe, have brought it about so that the evidence in favor of the resurrection, the Bible, or the Koran was better than we currently find it? I take it that the answer is obviously yes. Even if you think there is evidence that is sufficient to prove the resurrection, a reasonable person must also acknowledge that it could have been better. And there’s the problem. If the capacity of that god is greater than the effectiveness or quality of those scriptures, prophets, or special revelations, then the story they are telling contradicts itself. 'We know our god is real on the basis of evidence that is inadequate for our god.' Or, 'The grounds that lead us to believe in our god are inconsistent with the god we accept; nevertheless, we believe in this god that would have given us greater evidence if it had wished for us to believe in it.'Given the disparity between the gods that these religious movements portend and the grounds offered to justify them, the atheist is warranted in dismissing such claims. If the sort of divine being that they promote were real and if he had sought our believe on the basis of the evidence, the evidential situation would not resemble the one we are in. The story doesn’t make internal sense. A far better explanation is that their enthusiasm for believing in a god has led them to overstate what the evidence shows. And that same enthusiasm has made it difficult for them to see that an all powerful God would have the power to make his existence utterly obvious and undeniable. Since it’s not, the non-believer can’t possibly be faulted for failing to believe.
— Matthew S. McCormick
Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
[I do not believe] in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.
— Max Planck, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science
I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.
— Isaac Asimov
You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use— silence, exile, and cunning.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all - but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.
— Abraham Lincoln
And Dil was realizing that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed anymore.
— Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
On the other side, Church spokesmen could scarcely become enthusiastic about Planck's deism, which omitted all reference to established religions and had no more doctrinal content than Einstein's Judaism.
— J.L. Heilbron, The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science
Life in illusion is in a transient belief on insight without perspective
— Farley Maglaya
If, as I have reason to believe, I have disintegrated the nucleus of the atom, this is of greater significance than th
— Ernest Rutherford
Interesting Avil, the priests and the acolytes of the various religions and temples of Torea build their whole lives on a lie. At first, as children they believe it. Maybe as they grow older and more wise they see the absurdness of their beliefs, but by that time they have invested time and emotional energy into those beliefs, then seeing them crumble and fall apart would be too hard for them to bear. So the protect the lie, they shore it up with more lies and they ebb out their short lives, knowing what they preach is untrue, but preaching it all the same... Almost as if preaching it hard enough will make it true... Are they trying to convince their congregation? Or themselves? You are wiser than you look Avil.
— Martyn Stanley, The Verkreath Horror
No religion can fully accept another religion, that’s the one belief all religions share
— Ben Mitchell
The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible.
— Siméon Denis Poisson
Do I believe in God? That somebody made all this happen for a reason, that there’s something waiting for us after we die? That there’s a purpose to all this crap? I don’t know. I’d like to be able to say “Yes, of course” almost as much as I’d like to be able to say “Absolutely not,” but there’s evidence on both sides of the fence.
— Mira Grant, Feed
In a determined reversal of her inherent nature, Kochu Maria now, as a policy, hardly ever believed anything that anybody said.
— Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.
— Michael Faraday
You may be operating from the belief that you must do everything yourself because no one will ever be there for you. Or you may think that if you never speak up you’ll avoid being rejected. Both these fears no longer apply to you today as an adult. If you never reach out for help, you will continue to deprive yourself.
— Beverly Engel, The Right to Innocence
Its all about perspective, that is how you look at things. Your own thoughts and outlook defines whether an experience, event, situation whatever is good or bad. And your definition determines your response.
— Stella Payton
The moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement, then they assign all the baggage and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important there is to know about you because of that association. And that's not the way to have a conversation.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
A conversation in which the two parties have different beliefs should never begin with the intention of converting the other party to your own beliefs. Every worthwhile conversation's goal should be to understand the other person's opinions and help them understand your own.
— Emily Eskowich
...There's a lot I don't understand...but not understanding is better not believing" - Ambrose
— Amy Harmon, Making Faces
At least you earned your belief in something...Most people around here just say they believe whatever their family believes. They don't bother thinking for themselves...And the less they know, the louder they believe it.
— Angela N. Blount, Once Upon a Road Trip
The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.
— Ashley Montagu, Science and Creationism
We become what we believe
— Lolly Daskal, Thoughts Spoken From The Heart
No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things.I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ...I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why.I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ...I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me that God is in Heaven and that my son is in Hell. I tell the world the one true thing I know: If my son is in Hell, then there is no Heaven--because if my son sits in Hell, there is no God.
— Stephen Adly Guirgis, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
Its all about perception, that is how you look at. Your own thoughts and outlook defines whether it is good or bad. And your definition determines your response.
— Stella Payton
One of his private vanities was that all the garbage sorting had endowed his hands with killing strength—that he could chop a brick in half like Bruce Lee. “So let’s get a brick,” replied a girl with whom he had once, injudiciously, shared this conviction. Abdul had bumbled away. The brick belief was something he wanted to harbor, not to test.
— Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Laugh, laugh at all my dreams!What I dream shall yet come true!Laugh at my belief in man,At my belief in you.Freedom still my soul demands,Unbartered for a calf of gold.For still I do believe in man,And in his spirit, strong and bold.And in the future I still believeThough it be distant, come it willWhen nations shall each other bless,And peace at last the earth shall fill.
— Shaul Tchernichovsky
Dark night of the soul,” said Jesus, “Happens to everybody sooner or later.
— Ron Koertge, Coaltown Jesus
All is best, though we oft doubt, what the unsearchable dispose, of highest wisdom brings about.
— John Milton, Samson Agonistes
Judge, criticize, object before you decide to believe something; but once you believe, you're but an idiot if you need to be scrupulous any more.
— Raheel Farooq
Of all the wars that have taken place wince then, none has endured so long as the conflict between knowledge and belief. For centuries now, knowledge has attempted, unsuccessfully, to supersede belief. But the entire clash stems from a misapprehension of the nature of belief. We can't not believe; and we won't ever know everything. We know this much: knowledge remains an endless advance toward an end point that endlessly recedes.
— Adam Leith Gollner, The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever
I admire those believers who speak of such things with the same aplomb as if the'd just split a beer with God in the cabin next door.
— Sylvain Tesson, Dans les forêts de Sibérie
[On scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss][Carl Friedrich] Gauss told his friend Rudolf Wagner, a professor of biology at Gottingen University, that he did not believe in the Bible but that he had meditated a great deal on the future of the human soul and speculated on the possibility of the soul being reincarnated on another planet. Evidently, Gauss was a Deist with a good deal of skepticism concerning religion.
— Gerhard Falk, American Judaism in Transition: The Secularization of a Religious Community
Anytime you meditate, some electric jerks occur in your thigh...the symbol of premonition of an unpleasant event that has happened or will take place in future.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
All the more recent work on alkaptonuria has... strengthened the belief that the homogentisic acid excreted is derived from tyrosine, but why alkaptonuric individuals pass the benzene ring of their tyrosine unbroken and how and where the peculiar chemical change from tyrosine to homogentisic acid is brought about, remain unsolved problems.
— Archibald E. Garrod
The finest peculiarity of belief is that believers do not recognize themselves as believers.
— Adam Leith Gollner, The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever
The twentieth century prided itself on invalidating the metaphysical. Doubts about the afterlife arose even as so-called nonbelievers attempted to locate surrogates for the loss of meaning atheism occasioned. Enraptured with progress, we deepened our collective worship of science. As incredulity to metanarratives rose, so did a massive publicity campaign to convince us of the omnipotence of science.
— Adam Leith Gollner, The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living Forever
I just wanted to thank you' he says, his voice low.'A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me - they showed you the test results that proved it. And even I started to believe it.' He touches my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone, and his eyes are on mine, intense and insistent.'You never believed it,' he says 'Not for a second. You always insisted I was... I don't know, whole.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
Twelve minutes. I can give you that.
— Rick Riordan, The House of Hades
...if you ask me whether or not I'm an atheist, I wouldn't even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I'm supposed not to believe in, and I've never seen an explanation.
— Noam Chomsky
I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.
— George Gordon Byron
[When asked about his thoughts on gods]I think it's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything. Man lived on the planet — [placing his fingers an inch apart], this is 5000 years of semi-recorded history. And God and the Bible, that came in somewhere around the middle, maybe 2000. This is the last 2000, this is what we're about to celebrate [indicating about an 1/8th of an inch with his fingers]. Now, humans, in some shape or form, have been on the earth for three million years [pointing across the room to indicate the distance]. So, all this time, from there [gesturing toward the other side of the room], to here [indicating the 1/8th of an inch], there was no God, there was no story, there was no myth and people lived on this planet and they wandered and they gathered and they did all these things. The planet was never threatened. How did they survive for all this time without this belief in God? I'd like to ask this to someone who knows about Christianity and maybe you do. That just seems funny to me.
— Eddie Vedder
As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.
— Diogenes Laërtius
My past conduct was so transparent and so honest that when my enemies spread rumours about me nobody believed them.
— Amit Kalantri
I am an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people.
— Katharine Hepburn
My method is atheism. I find the atheistic outlook provides a favourable background for cosmopolitan practices. Acceptance of atheism at once pulls down caste and religious barriers between man and man. There is no longer a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian. All are human beings. Further, the atheistic outlook puts man on his legs. There is neither divine will nor fate to control his actions. The release of free will awakens Harijans [lowest caste] and the depressed classes from the stupor of inferiority into which they were pressed all these ages when they were made to believe that they were fated to be untouchables. So I find the atheistic outlook helpful for my work [helping people]. After all it is man that created god to make society moral and to silence restless inquisitiveness about the how and why of natural phenomena. Of course god was useful though a falsehood. But like all falsehoods, belief in god also gave rise to many evils in course of time and today it is not only useless but harmful to human progress. So I take to the propagation of atheism as an aid to my work. The results justify my choice.
— Goparaju Ramachandra Rao, An Atheist with Gandhi
Assumption is one dreadful and incurable disease, which sticks to the soul and wiggles across the skin.
— Aniruddha Sastikar
By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.
— Charlie Chaplin
Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
— Aristophanes, The Knights
At its Greek root, "to believe" simply means "to give one's heart to." Thus, if we can determine what it is we give our heart to, then we will know what it is we believe.
— Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith
I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others.
— Jawaharlal Nehru
Beyond all of that, I could see the wall I had seen from inside the train, the wall that runs along the train line. I assumed that there, behind it, was the west, and I was right. I could have been wrong, but I was right.' If she had any future it was over there, and she needed to get to it.I sit in the chair exploring the meaning of dumbstruck, rolling the word around in my mind. I laugh with Miriam as she laughs at herself, and at the boldness of being sixteen. At sixteen you are invulnerable. I laugh with her about rummaging around for a ladder in other people's sheds, and I laugh harder when she finds one. We laugh at the improbability of it, of someone barely more than a child poking around in Beatrix Potter's garden by the Wall, watching out for Mr McGregor and his blunderbuss, and looking for a step-ladder to scale one of the most fortified barriers on earth. We both like the girl she was, and I like the woman she has become.She says suddenly, 'I still have the scars on my hands from climbing the barbed wire, but you can't see them so well now.' She holds out her hands. The soft parts of her palms are crazed with definite white scares, each about a centimeter long.The first fence was wire mesh with a roll of barbed wire along the top.
— Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
If there is a god maybe it rewards those who don't believe on the basis of insufficient evidence--and punishes those who do.
— Peter Boghossian
If you want your lie to be believed then you need to speak thousand truths before you lie.
— Amit Kalantri
If I believe my ability is small, then my efforts will be shallow and my push weak. If I think I am not capable, I will not try with energy. Without strong belief, I won’t seek the knowledge required to achieve my goals. I will not launch out into the deep or push against obstacles with the force that confidence brings.
— Stella Payton
You're looking at me as though I'm weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It's in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.
— Antonin Scalia
Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other,--what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.
— William James, The Will to Believe, Human Immortality and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins.
— Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow
Every day when I open my eyes it is a leap of vibrational faith into something new
— Debbie A. Anderson
For where belief dwells, the spider may not stir, neither by day nor by night.
— Jeremias Gotthelf, Die schwarze Spinne
The most purely free decision one can make—and thus, the highest order of spirit on Earth—is believing in something without evidential knowledge.
— J.S.B. Morse, Now and at the Hour of Our Death
Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief.
— William James, The Will to Believe, Human Immortality and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
Most successful people move from fear to failure
—  to faith and then to fruitfulness. That's the trend.
The aim of this book is not to make atheism a popular belief or even to overcome its invisibility. My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons for being an atheist. … My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and that belief in God is not. I am quite aware that atheistic beliefs are not always based on reason. My claim is that they should be.
— Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification
Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand
— Stanisław Jerzy Lec
We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc.
— Julian Huxley
We either base our 'confidence' on reason (evident probabilities, past experience, competence, etc) or﻿ we base our beliefs on faith, which is blind by definition. Faith is the most dishonest position it is possible to have, because it is an assertion of stoic conviction that is assumed without reason and defended against all reason. If you have to believe it on faith, you have no reason to believe it at all.
— AronRa
If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.
— Denis Diderot
Had she believed all that? Old Pilar's folklore? No, not really; or not exactly. Most likely Pilar hadn't quite believed it either, but it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead but were alive in a different way; a paler way admittedly, and somewhat darker. But still able to send messages, if only such messages could be recognized and deciphered. People need such stories, Pilar said once, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void.
— Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam
The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don’t—whichever seems likelier to win an effect.
— John Updike, Rabbit, Run
I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
— Thomas Carlyle
When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.
— Bertrand Russell
Many ask what difference does it make whether man believes in a God or not.It makes a big difference.It makes all the difference in the world.It is the difference between being right and being wrong; it is the difference between truth and surmises—facts or delusion.It is the difference between the earth being flat, and the earth being round.It is the difference between the earth being the center of the universe, or a tiny speck in this vast and uncharted sea of multitudinous suns and galaxies.It is the difference in the proper concept of life, or conclusions based upon illusion.It is the difference between verified knowledge and the faith of religion.It is a question of Progress or the Dark Ages.
— Joseph Lewis, An Atheist Manifesto
The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious belief in lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished us to believe.
— Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter of Mars, Vol 1
The history of man proves that religion perverts man's concept of life and the universe, and has made him a cringing coward before the blind forces of nature.If you believe that there is a God; that man was 'created'; that he was forbidden to eat of the fruit of the 'tree of knowledge'; that he disobeyed; that he is a 'fallen angel'; that he is paying the penalty for his 'sins,' then you devote your time praying to appease an angry and jealous God.If, on the other hand, you believe that the universe is a great mystery; that man is the product of evolution; that he is born without knowledge; that intelligence comes from experience, then you devote your time and energies to improving his condition with the hope of securing a little happiness here for yourself and your fellow man.That is the difference.If man was 'created,' then someone made a grievous mistake.
— Joseph Lewis, An Atheist Manifesto
The choice to believe is yours. It’s the only thing that truly is.
— J.S.B. Morse, Now and at the Hour of Our Death
The superstitious man wishes he did not believe in gods, as the atheist does not, but fears to disbelieve in them.
— Plutarch
Ironically, the only people anyone believes these days are the skeptics.
— J.S.B. Morse, Now and at the Hour of Our Death
The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the 'Super', i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.
— Enrico Fermi
One must not align himself with the beliefs that limit his thinking
—  free from all beliefs and superstitions
To give value to others, you have to begin by valuing yourself.
— Tim Fargo
It is for the good of states that men should be deluded by religion.
— Publius Papinius Statius
Like Alan Turing, Zuse was educated in a system that focused on a child's emotional and philosophical life as well as his intellectual life, and at the end of school, like Turing, Zuse found himself to be something of an outsider—to the disappointment of his very conventional parents, he no longer believed in God or religion.(Jane Smiley (2010). The Man Who Invented the Computer)
— Konrad Zuse
As in the days of the first Merovingian, who pledged allegiance to the cross because of a victorious battle, today's children of the banalized Enlightenment are likewise meant to burn what they worshipped and worship what they burned.
— Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern
The brain is a stubborn organ. Once its primary set of beliefs has been established, the brain finds it difficult to integrate opposing ideas and beliefs. This has profound consequences for individuals and society and helps to explain why some people cannot abandon destructive beliefs, be they religious, political or psychological.
— Andrew B. Newberg
A theist can't empirically prove that God exists but he believes in God because no one can allegedly disprove God's existence. By his logic, you must believe in anything you can't disprove. That means all things are real until disproved--including the tooth fairy, the Loch Ness Monster, Santa Claus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc.
— G.M. Jackson, How to Prove God Does Not Exist
God wants us to believe in something bigger and better than ourselves.
— Jessica Lowery, Spiritual Confidence
I guess sometimes the truth just isn't worth believing... Personally, I've always felt that life's too short for truth. I'm just here to be entertained.
— J. Ross Clara, Citations: A Brief Anthology
Our fated untainted soul gives us free reign, only doth backward pull our clouded minds when we ourselves falsely protect from pain.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
I believe in you and me. I'm like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life -- in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don't believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice.
— Frank Sinatra
As long as there is life, there is a potential; and as long as there is a potential, there will be a success! You will sprout again when cut down! You will rise again even when you fall!
— Israelmore Ayivor
For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.
— Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Maybe at the very bottom of it... I really don't like God. You know, it's silly to say I don't like God because I don't believe in God, but in the same sense that I don't like Iago, or the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism and Christianity and Islam seems to me a terrible character. He's a god who will... who obsessed the degree to which people worship him and anxious to punish with the most awful torments those who don't worship him in the right way. Now I realise that many people don't believe in that any more who call themselves Muslims or Jews or Christians, but that is the traditional God and he's a terrible character. I don't like him.
— Steven Weinberg
There are those whose views about religion are not very different from my own, but who nevertheless feel that we should try to damp down the conflict, that we should compromise it. … I respect their views and I understand their motives, and I don't condemn them, but I'm not having it. To me, the conflict between science and religion is more important than these issues of science education or even environmentalism. I think the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief; and anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.
— Steven Weinberg
When story and behavior are consistent, we relax; when story and behavior are inconsistent, we get tense. We have a deep psychological need for our stories and behaviors to be consistent. We need to be able to trust the story, because it's the lens through which we see reality. We will go to great lengths in the attempt to make a story that explains an action and supports or restores consistency. If we cannot make story and action fit, we either have to make a new story or change the action. ... [But] The drive for consistency and the ability to redefine abhorrent action so it fits the story are very complex issues. We have a huge ability to continue believing stories we are told are true in order to stay comfortable with actions we don't want to change, or don't feel capable of changing.
— Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story
Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Issac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing.
— Steven Weinberg
Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Powers
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?
— Steven Weinberg
Stop and say something good about yourself! Believe what you have just said! Pray for what you have just believed! Have faith for what you just prayed for! Work out that faith! ...and surely goodness and mercy shall follow you!
— Israelmore Ayivor
The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should not be cowed by exaggerated sensitivity to people's religious beliefs and fail to speak vigorously and pointedly when the devout put forth arguments manifestly contrary to all the acquired knowledge of the past two or three millennia. Those who advocate a piece of folly like the theory of an 'intelligent creator' should be held accountable for their folly; they have no right to be offended for being called fools until they establish that they are not in fact fools. Religiously inclined writers like Stephen L Carter may plead that 'respect' should be accorded to religious views in public discourse, but he neglects to demonstrate that those views are worthy of respect. All secularists -- scientists, literary figures, even politicians (if there are any such with the requisite courage) -- should speak out on the issue when the opportunity presents itself.
— S.T. Joshi, Atheism: A Reader
Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic position, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction.That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.
— Thomas Henry Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays