c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ...So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.
— Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays, Volume 5: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with the natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.- Science and Religion (1941)
— Albert Einstein
I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist.[Letter to Max Otto]
— John Dewey
Overcome the prideful need to measure your worth by how much more successful you are than others, by operating from a core belief grounded in abundance.
— Richie Norton, The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live without Regret
The predisposition to religious belief is an ineradicable part of human behavior. Mankind has produced 100,000 religions. It is an illusion to think that scientific humanism and learning will dispel religious belief. Men would rather believe than know... A kind of Darwinistic survival of the fittest has occurred with religions... The ecological principle called Gause's law holds that competition is maximal between species with identical needs... Even submission to secular religions such as Communism and guru cults involve willing subordination of the individual to the group. Religious practices confer biological advantage. The mechanisms of religion include (1) objectification (the reduction of reality to images and definitions that are easily understood and cannot be refuted), (2) commitment through faith (a kind of tribalism enacted through self-surrender), (3) and myth (the narratives that explain the tribe's favored position on the earth, often incorporating supernatural forces struggling for control, apocalypse, and millennium).
— Edward O. Wilson
Logically, this kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God.... On the contrary, Southwell was typical in placing the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God and Holyoake regarded himself as an atheist only in his inability to believe what the churches would have him believe. They were content to show that the Christian concept of the supernatural was meaningless, that the arguments in its favor were illogical, and that the mysteries of the universe, insofar as they were explicable, could be accounted for in material terms.
— Edward Royle
If a fact does not modify your logic on being known, either you don't believe the fact or it is not a fact.
— Raheel Farooq
The belief that myths are somehow less true than the symbolic dream we call 'reality' may be the greatest myth of all.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
I had given up the church, more because of its complicity with slavery than from a full understanding of the foolishness of its creeds.
— Lucy N. Colman
The trouble with believing conspiracies is you start seeing them everywhere, right? And everything becomes a part of them. But, of course, the trouble with not believing them is becoming a dupe.
— J. Ross Clara, Citations: A Brief Anthology
It's awkward how some people refuse to be humans regarding their behaviours! Isn't that against God's will for he created them as humans? And yet, they at night hold hands up and ask God for forgiveness and to grant them their wishes; when he created animals sinless.
— Mustafa SULTAN
Believe in your dreams or don't dream at all.
— Kensie F
...properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic.
— Robert Flint, Agnosticism
If one believes in a god, one is a Theist. If one does not believe in a god, then one is an A-theist — he is without that belief. The distinction between atheism and theism is entirely, exclusively, that of whether one has or has not a belief in God.
— Chapman Cohen
When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep
— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
For, dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true?Cling to it long enough, and not a doubtIt will turn true again, for so it goes.Most of the change we think we see in lifeIs due to truths being in and out of favor.As I sit here, and often times, I wishI could be monarch of a desert landI could devote and dedicate foreverTo the truths we keep coming back and back to.––from "The Black Cottage
— Robert Frost, Collected Poems of Robert Frost
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.
— Albert Einstein
Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God. The atheist does not say that there is no God, but he says 'I know not what you mean by God. I am without the idea of God. The word God to me is a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it for me.
— Charles Bradlaugh, The Freethinker's Text-Book: Man: Whence and How? Religion: What and Why?
I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one, it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men.
— Björk
When I think of the years when I had no faith, what I am struck by, first of all, is how little this lack disrupted my conscious life. I lived not without God, nor wish his absence, but in a mild abeyance of belief, drifting through the days on a tide of tiny vanities — a publication, a flirtation, a strong case made for some weak nihilism — nights all adagios and alcohol as my mind tore luxuriously into itself. I can see now how deeply God’s absence affected my unconscious life, how under me always there was this long fall that pride and fear and self-live at once protected me from and subjected me to. Was the fall into belief or into unbelief? Both. For if grace woke me to God’s presence in the world and in my heart, it also woke me to his absence. I never truly felt the pain of unbelief until I began to believe.
— Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
Belief in God meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah
—  and I would not pretend I did not know whether it existed or not.
All tastes are expressions of belief.
— Zadie Smith
The stories you believe to be true are the ones your life will become.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.
— Jean-Paul Sartre
The way to embody love completely is to see and appreciate life just as it is, and not as you believe, fear, or desire it to be.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Sometimes belief is the reason for liberation; other times, our own conviction prevents our escape. It depends on whether or not you believe God is listening, if you can cling to hope in the gravest of times. Hope is a precious life force within us.
— Christopher Hawke, Unnatural Truth
I could almost see fairies skipping on top of the snake-tongue flames—brief moments of clarity overcome by suffocating normalcy. It occurred to me that everything is believable during a glimpse, and it is during these flashes we see things as they truly are—unruly shadows in the corner of our perceptions. The only way to overcome is to act as Rachael did—as we all should—staring into the brightest light we can manage, until any hint of darkness is burned from our vision.
— Christopher Hawke, Unnatural Truth
I was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Among us, on the other hand, 'the righteous man lives by faith.' Now, if you take away positive affirmation, you take away faith, for without positive affirmation nothing is believed. And there are truths about things unseen, and unless they are believed, we cannot attain to the happy life, which is nothing less than life eternal. It is a question whether we ought to argue with those who profess themselves ignorant not only about the eternity yet to come but also about their present existence, for they [the Academics] even argue that they do not know what they cannot help knowing. For no one can 'not know' that he himself is alive. If he is not alive, he cannot 'not know' about it or anything else at all, because either to know or to 'not know' implies a living subject. But, in such a case, by not positively affirming that they are alive, the skeptics ward off the appearance of error in themselves, yet they do not make errors simply by showing themselves alive; one cannot err who is not alive. That we live is therefore not only true, but it is altogether certain as well. And there are many things that are thus true and certain concerning which, if we withhold positive assent, this ought not to be regarded as a higher wisdom but actually a sort of dementia.
— Augustine of Hippo, The Enchiridion on Faith Hope and Love
From my college courses and my reading I knew the various names that came at the end of a line of questions or were placed as periods to bafflement: the First Cause, the First Mover, the Life Force, the Universal Mind, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover, even Providence. I too had used those names in arguing with others, and with myself, trying to explain the world to myself. And now I saw that those names explained nothing. They were of no more use than Evolution or Natural Selection or Nature or The Big Bang of these later days. All such names do is catch us within the length and breadth of our own thoughts and our own bewilderment. Though I knew the temptation of simple reason, to know nothing that can't be proved, still I supposed that those were not the right names.I imagined that the right name might be Father, and I imagined all that that name would imply: the love, the compassion, the taking offense, the disappointment, the anger, the bearing of wounds, the weeping of tears, the forgiveness, the suffering unto death. If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?Yes. I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not. I could imagine Port William riding its humble wave through time under the sky, its little flames of wakefulness lighting and going out, its lives passing through birth, pleasure, sufferning, and death. I could imagine God looking down upon it, its lives living by His spirit, breathing by His breath, knowing by His light, but each life living also (inescapably) by its own will--His own body given to be broken.
— Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
I do not go to church. I don’t go to Christian church or Jew church or any other church. I don’t go to church at all. Not ever. A perfect Sunday for me is spent drinking green tea while reading the Sunday New York Times. Yikes! Why don’t I just turn in my Al-Qaeda membership form and call it a day? As if that wasn’t bad enough, not only do I not go to church:I don’t believe in God. How can I say the Pledge of Allegiance if I don’t believe in God? How can I spend our American currency which pledges “In God We Trust?” How can I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help me God? Answer: I can’t. It’s a real problem. Don’t get me wrong – I’d like to believe in God. I wish I did, especially if He was the kind of God that thought America was #1. But I don’t, which to many people is the same as not believing in America. Up until recently, I thought those people were lunatics.
— Michael Ian Black
Many of the innovations in science and philosophy have come from unbelievers, some of whom died for their 'unbeliefs.' Without unbelief, we might well be living in the Dark Ages or at least in the intellectual equivalent of that time.In past centuries many theists savagely attacked atheists on the ground that someone without a belief in God must be a moral 'monster,' who would permit any action. This argument is rarely heard today, as the number of people who are openly atheists has become so large that its falsity is self-evident. Atheists do have a moral code to guide them. It is usually based upon the Golden Rule, plus a variety of utilitarian reasons, although there are a number of other possible systems. Rather than being immoral, most atheists are extremely moral.There are a large number of people who can and do manage to lead decent upright lives with no use for a belief in God as a guide. Atheists do not care whether others believe as they do. They do ask, however, for the right to believe as they wish ....
— Gordon Stein, The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, 2 Vols
I'm a strong opponent of all religious belief.(Conversations pg 96)
— J.G. Ballard
Maybe the reason faith is called faith is because seeing doesn’t lead to belief, but belief transforms the way we see.
— Josh Ross, Scarred Faith: When Doubts Become Allies of Deep Faith
I don't believe in God, I only believe in Al Pacino, and that's the truth.
— Javier Bardem
Believing isn't a choice... belief is an involuntary response to something you've learned or experienced.
— Neil Carter
[Religious belief is] outmoded and ridiculous. [Belief in gods was a] worn out but once useful crutch in mankind's journey towards truth. We consider the time has come for that crutch to be abandoned.
— Peter   Atkins
The ribboned gallons that rule us like beliefs rooted in single experiences.
— Cameron Conaway, Bonemeal
I don't give a damn for anybody's opinion, I only care about the facts. So I'm not an enthusiast for diversity of opinion where factual matters are concerned.
— Richard Dawkins
No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
Men are more resilient than that, I think. Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope.
— Brandon Sanderson
It takes the trust of God for things that exist, to wait on him for the evidence of things that do not exist. Faith and hope make you to thank God for the invisible things by looking at the visible things which were once invisible too.
— Israelmore Ayivor
I have lost confidence in myself.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Be careful of the lie you believe about yourself, sooner or later, you will be convinced of it.
— Saji Ijiyemi, Don't Die Sitting
Trust is like a two-way mirror, transparent on one side, with a blind dimness unable to see through on the other side.
— Anthony Liccione
What our Heavenly Father wants us to do about our spiritual failures is like what our earthly father wants us to do about our earthly failures. When we fall off the horse, or the bike, or the high road to Heaven, we must simply climb on again as soon as we are aware of the fact that we have fallen off, rather than sitting there stewing in self-pity or self-hatred.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
Tradition is the code that keeps change in lock. If you refuse change, you are likely to rust and guess the cause; that long held way of doing things.
— Israelmore Ayivor
We are not free to love God insofar as we are enslaved to creatures. And we all are. We are addicted to whatever we cannot part with that is less than God, our true good. And that includes ourselves--especially ourselves and our own will. So we must renounce this too, this especially. God's world is not the problem; our attitude is. God does not want us to renounce the unspeakably beautiful world he gave us as creation, as gift, as it really is. He wants us to renounce it as creator, as our god, as it really is not. This wonderful world is our God-given house to live in and to live the love of God in. But God's bride must learn not to love her house as if it were her husband.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond... flesh, the moment of being alive... then nothing. I had searched in superstition... But there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so... tender. I regretted that I had paid it no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me... I saw that those simple things might be true... I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. You can believe in something without compromising the burden of your own existence.
— Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
Believing in everything looks a lot like believing in nothing.
— Eric    Weiner, Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine
I am not moved by what I see.; I am moved by what I believe. What I do believe is greater, stronger and mightier than what I have my eyes on. Deep in my heart I do believe, I shall overcome.
— Israelmore Ayivor
How we think about God matters. It affects the credibility of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Our concept of God can make God seem real or unreal, just as it can also make God seem remote or near.
— Marcus J. Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith
I think you have to be more of a believer for these things to work," he said, wiping some ice cream from his face. "How are you supposed to find what you're looking for if you're not convinced it's even out there?
— Jennifer E. Smith
It is not what happens to you or for you that makes you grateful. It's how you respond to what is happening, that shows your belief about gratitude.
— Sumner Davenport
Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to us). These are the tow reasons we hid from other people, even our friends, even our parents, and the tow reasons we should never hide from God.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
I'd rather believe in something and be wrong, than believe in nothing and be wrong.
— Claudialyn Rodriguez Cosentino
Prayer is essentially the practice of the presence of God, and that is the road to Heaven. There is no alternative. God is the only game in town. All other roads are dead ends. Since we must give our all to the one true God, we must not give any part to idols, to the many false gods that now bite away at our lives.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
We are not defined by belief or by faith nor religion.We are the family of God.
— Ellen J. Barrier
He was the old breed of Filipino, almost extinct, who required that he deserve what he received; who would feel guilt, not only shame or embarrassment; who accounted for each day in the office and observed public trust as if it were a word of God. But even God was nowhere. The new theology proclaimed him dead. Long live Man! Love live Me!
— Linda Ty-Casper, The Hazards of Distance
What we consider too good to be true, is truth; all else is fallacy
— Oshetha Shakoor
The practice of the presence of God, though we begin it at special times of prayer, is designed to spill out and over and into all times.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
Nothing is unbelievable, just expand your vision.
— Saru Singhal, Rousing Cadence
I like the confusion you get between science and religion … that’s where belief lies and art as well.
— Damien Hirst
I strongly believe in after life because life down here is too costly.
— Nadair Desmar
My fear is not death. I only fear GOD so as all of you should.
— Nadair Desmar
We would all believe in God if he served our every whim. Belief is not about an easy life or even truth. Belief is something you have regardless.
— Jessica Shirvington, Enticed
Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed," he said. "And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their exc
— Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons
Knowing isn't always believing.
— Nora Roberts, The Search
Love and kindness are the hammer and chisel that gently chip through barriers and long-held beliefs to reveal the magnificent soul contained within every human.
— Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths
[T]o believe in a god is in one way to express a willingness to believe in anything. Whereas to reject the belief is by no means to profess belief in nothing.
— Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
We must only believe.
— David Paul Kirkpatrick, The Address Of Happiness
What do you know of gods and saints?” I ask, filling my voice with scorn.His fingers drift to the silver oak leaf of Saint Camulos on his cloak. “I know that what our saints want is not always made clear to us. Sometimes, it is their wish for us to flail and struggle and come to our own choices, not accept ones that have been made for us.
— Robin LaFevers
Keep at it. Persistence does pay dividends. But there is a catch
—  you gotta believe it before manifestation will validate conviction as [your] truth. And sacrifice is a required path to fulfillment.
So where does the name Adam's apple come from? Most people say that it is from the notion that this bump was caused by the forbidden fruit getting stuck in the throat of Adam in the Garden of Eden. There is a problem with this theory because some Hebrew scholars believe that the forbidden fruit was the pomegranate. The Koran claims that the forbidden fruit was a banana. So take your pick---Adam's apple, Adam's pomegranate, Adam's banana. Eve clearly chewed before swallowing.
— Mark Leyner, Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? More Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour
Faith, that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
Debt . . . . that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect, often with explosive force.
— Margaret Atwood, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Some things are worth believing in. That the little guy can make it. Every single life has value and is worth living. That honor and integrity do matter. That justice will prevail – if not in this life – then the next, and that God does exist. And what we do in our lives matters.
— Glenn Beck
Panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations.
— Charles Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism
It is not science which leads to unbelief but rather ignorance. The ignorant man thinks he understands something provided that he sees it every day. The natural philosopher walks amid enigmas, always striving to understand and always half-understanding. He learns to believe what he does not understand, and that is a step on the road to faith.
— Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa
Everybody else is doing it is an excuse, not a reason. It could be that everybody else isn't, but the Devil is introducing you to the few that are in the hopes that he can fool you.
— Paula Knoderer Hrbacek, Stars Shine After Dark
Doubt keeps us from believing things can get better.
— Renee Swope, A Confident Heart: How to Stop Doubting Yourself & Live in the Security of God's Promises
Don't ever feel like your best days are behind you. Reinvention is the purest form of hope. Make today your best yet!
— Phil Wohl
I give no shit to what extent they believe in superstitions and fanaticism. But I will fight till death, if their fallacious belief hurts any individual.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Capitalist ideology in general, Zizek maintains, consists precisely in the overvaluing of belief - in the sense of inner subjective attitude - at the expense of the beliefs we exhibit and externalize in our behavior. So long as we believe (in our hearts) that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalist exchange. According to Zizek, capitalism in general relies on this structure of disavowal. We believe that money is only a meaningless token of no intrinsic worth, yet we act as if it has a holy value. Moreover, this behavior precisely depends upon the prior disavowal - we are able to fetishize money in our actions only because we have already taken an ironic distance towards money in our heads.
— Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Unbelief puts our circumstances between us and God
—  faith puts God between us and our circumstances.
You do not have to wait until you become a saint. [Prayer] is the way to become a saint.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
Belief is an illusion, backed by your heart and mind.
— Sachin Kumar Puli
If you believe it, it happens. If you don't, it doesn't. When you believe him, you put your own power in his hands.
— Jerry Spinelli, Hokey Pokey
You may spend fifty or eighty years of your life believing in something totally false, and this is what happens to most people!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
To invoke Jesus' name is to place yourself in his presence, to open yourself to his power, his energy. The prayer of Jesus' name actually brings God closer, making him more present. He is always present in some way, since he knows and loves each one of us at every moment; but he is not present to those who do not pray as intimately as he is present to those who do. Prayers a difference; 'prayer changes things.' It may or may not change our external circumstances. (It does if God sees that that change is good for us; it does not if God sees that it is not.) but it always changes our relationship to God, which is infinitely more important than external circumstances, however pressing they may seem, because it is eternal but they are temporary, and because it is our very self but they are not.
— Peter Kreeft, Prayer for Beginners
We were greeted by the minister whose inclusive, non-judgemental smile was no more than a whisker away from a smirk. Have I made it clear? I don't like belief systems and even less like those that peddle self-righteousness. I have no doubt the minister was a sincere man, but I am not as impressed by the idea of sincerity as the sincere seem to be.
— Jenny Diski, On Trying to Keep Still
if there are many choices of 3.4 billion women/men in this world (2010 statistic: 65% from overall population or 2,2 billion are 15-64 years old women/men) , why should be narrowed with only view to the same beliefs ?
— cG9sYXJhZGl0aWE=
Inspiration is not the thing which can be seek, its right within you.
— Ujas Soni
What people say realistic, may not necessarily the same as what we think. At the end we will know which one Is ourselves, which one is not.
— Dee Lestari, Perahu Kertas
For every shrill and violent voice that throws itself in front of microphones and cameras in the name of God, there are countless lives of gentleness and good works who will not. We need to see and hear them, as well, to understand the whole story of religion in our world.
— Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith
We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble.
— Emily Dickinson
Tell me something, Mari—do you believe in reincarnation?” Mari shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so,” she says. “So you don’t think there’s a life to come?” “I haven’t thought much about it. But it seems to me there’s no reason to believe in a life after this one.” “So once you’re dead there’s just nothing?”“Basically.”“Well, I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I’m scared to think there isn’t. I can’t understand nothingness. I can’t understand it and I can’t imagine it.” “Nothingness means there’s absolutely nothing, so maybe there’s no need to understand it or imagine it.” “Yeah, but what if nothingness is not like that? What if it’s the kind of thing that demands that you understand it or imagine it? I mean, you don’t know what it’s like to die, Mari. Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it’s like.” “Well, yeah…,” says Mari. “I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff,” Korogi says. “I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It’s so much easier to just believe in reincarnation. You might be reborn as something awful, but at least you can imagine what you’d look like—a horse, say, or a snail. And even if it was something bad, you might be luckier next time.
— Haruki Murakami, After Dark
My Uncle Malky always said the Lord Leto never responded to prayer. He said the Lord Leto looked on prayer as attempted coercion, a form of violence against the chosen god, telling the immortal what to do: Give me a miracle, God, or I won't believe in you!
— Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
I don't believe in miracles, only unexplained facts.
— Morris West, The Devil's Advocate
We all - whether naturalists, atheists, Buddhists, or Christians - see the world through the grid of an interpretive framework - and ultimately this interpretive framework is religious in nature, even if not allied with a particular institutional religion.
— James K.A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
Each of us can walk only the path he sees at his own feet. Each of us is subject to the consequences of his own belief.
— Morris West, The Devil's Advocate
I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that terror comes. One is free - but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, toward the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one's own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing... I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going no place.
— Morris West, The Devil's Advocate
This (Earth) is hell.There are no fires, no burning pits of torment, no levels or rings or rivers of lava. When we die, we get put right back on earth to live our miserable existences over and over and over for all eternity.
— Larissa Ione, Pleasure Unbound
„Life is a beautiful denial to belief in death”.
— Alexandar Tomov
Who you are and what you believe in is your real home, the only home no one can take from you, the only home that will last.
— Adam Bagdasarian, Forgotten Fire
Lay down your cynicism, and believe in the transformational power of love.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought 'dogmatic,' for instance, in some circles accounted progressive, to assume the perfection or improvement of man in another world. But it is not thought "dogmatic" to assume the perfection or improvement of man in this world; though that idea of progress is quite as unproved as the idea of immortality, and from a rationalistic point of view quite as improbable. Progress happens to be one of our dogmas, and a dogma means a thing which is not thought dogmatic.
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
It's my belief that people enter your life at exactly the right time.
— Don Roff
We must question every inner-belief we possess without fear or attachment.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
The very thought of such people’s intolerant worldview, their inflated sense of self superiority, and their callous imposition of their own beliefs on others was enough to fill her with rage.
— Haruki Murakami
Sometimes I just wonder.Do we believe that God revolves around us?Or, do we believe that we revolve around God?These are staggering questions.
— Brandon Andress, And Then the End Will Come!: But Five Things You Need to Know in the Meantime
Beyond the late Fifties everything faded. When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness. You remembered huge events which had quite probably not happened, you remembered the details of incidents without being able to recapture their atmosphere, and there were long blank periods to which you could assign nothing. Everything had been different then.
— George Orwell, 1984
If others in the same Glass better see 'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me: For my Salvation must its Doom receive Not from what others, but what I believe.
— John Dryden, Oedipus: A Tragedy
When Sean died she understood for the first time how completely human beings were dependent upon a suspension of disbelief in order to simply move forward through their days. If that suspension faltered, if you truly understood, even if only for a moment, that human beings were made of bones and blood that broke and sprayed with the slightest provocation, and that provocation was everywhere--in street curbs and dangling tree limbs, bicycles and pencils--well you would fly for the first nest in a tree, run flat-out for the first burrow you saw.
— Erica Bauermeister, Joy for Beginners
Do you believe in Jesus?Jesse looks at me so brown-eyed it hurts.He nods."I do," he says.I sit up."I think you look like him.
— Carol Lynch Williams, Waiting
Mr. Passaro, let me teach you about how medicine works.” He starts out.“One of two things is going to happen. Either the Doctors are going to say I told you so, or they are going to say that Jess was the exception. What you believe will determine who gets to say I told you so to whom.” “Never stop believing.” He begs me.“Doctor, you are on the team”. I say.He smiles.
— JohnA Passaro, 6 Minutes Wrestling With Life
If a thing which is believed by billions is against the reason and not supported by the science, it is a great honour not to be amongst those billions!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Dragons and Afterlife .. I don't see any difference between both of them, we didn't see neither the dragons nor afterlife, we just heard about them and both of them are superstitions with no scientific or logical evidence .. But the only reason you believe in afterlife unlike dragons is that you've been taught to believe in it from your birthday. now if they taught you to believe in dragons and if it were mentioned in your Bible or your holy book you would have believed in it .. herein lies the danger of religions, you can believe something exists without any evidence .. and that's why you should only follow science and let go of your religious teachings
— Sherif Gaber
Anything is possible.""You really believe that?""It's what the great love stories are about, right?Beating the odds.
— Richard Castle
Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people—if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are—you may have lost perspective.
— Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
So many people along the way,whatever it is you aspire to do, will tell you it can't be done. But it all it takes is imagination. You dream. You plan. You reach. There will be obstacles. There will doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, with belief, with confidence and trust in yourself and those around you, there no limits,
— Michael  Phelps
As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God’s name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)
— Philip Yancey, Church: Why Bother?: My Personal Pilgrimage
If you've got a religious belief that withers in the face of observations of the natural world, you ought to rethink your beliefs - rethinking the world isn't an option.
— P.Z. Myers
Where is God when it hurts? We know one answer because God came to earth and showed us. You need only follow Jesus around and note how he responded to the tragedies of his day: large-scale tragedies such as an act of government terrorism in the temple or a tower collapsing on eighteen innocent bystanders; as well as small tragedies, such as a widow who has lost her only son or even a Roman soldier whose servant has fallen ill. At moments like these Jesus never delivered sermons about judgment or the need to accept God’s mysterious providence. Instead he responded with compassion – a word from Latin which simply means, “to suffer with” – and comfort and healings. God stands on the side of those who suffer. (pp.27-28/What Good Is God?)
— Philip Yancey, What Good Is God?: In Search of a Faith That Matters
He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways...
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
A belief is an absolute but arbitrary mental stance.
— Will Bowen, A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted
God reproduces and lives out His image in millions of ordinary people like us. It is a supreme mystery. We are called to bear that image as a Body because any one of us taken individually would present an incomplete image, one partly false and always distorted, like a single glass chip hacked from a mirror. But collectively, in all our diversity, we can come together as a community of believers to restore the image of God in the world. (In His Image, Philip Yancey and Dr. Paul Brand, p. 40)
— Philip Yancey, In His Image
What you call life is but a dream, and reality is relative.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe? Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
i've never believed in anything or anybody that needed constant praise.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?
— Andrew Lang, The Yellow Fairy Book
I need to dream.I need to believe. I need to know that I have some control in my life.That if I work hard, that I will be rewarded.That life is not arbitrary.I need to believe that bad things happen to good people, for a greater reason.That dedication, sacrifice, hard work, discipline are all worthy attributes that will eventually produce extraordinary results.That if I live a certain lifestyle, that my family will be better for that.That there is a direct link between my actions and my results.That If I prepare properly that I can face the insurmountable foe and look him in the eye and say “Bring it on, I can take whatever you can dish out.” I need to keep living in order to save my daughter from dying.
— JohnA Passaro, 6 Minutes Wrestling With Life
A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind.
— Elly Roselle
Straightening, I asked, "What do you believe in?""Old love songs, best friends, the collected works of J.R.R.Tolkien, crispy pork egg rolls with just the right amount of grease, the Big Boss and eternity.""The Big Boss?"Zachary pointed up, as if to heaven. "Pious,"I teased.
— Cynthia Leitich Smith, Blessed
Everyone has the spark of greatness
—  a leader's role is to pour oxygen onto it forming the fire within.
The only consolation, even for someone like him who had been a good man in bed, was sexual peace: the slow, merciful extinction of his venereal appetite. At eighty-one years of age he had enough lucidity to realize that he was attached to this world by a few slender threads that could break painlessly with a simple change in position while he slept, and if he did all he could to keep those threads intact, it was because of his terror of not finding God in the darkness of death.
— Gabriel García Márquez
For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power.
— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
He did not seek to assume the mantle of Elijah, to shed a light of the future upon the misty turmoil of events or resolve the prevailing light into a single flame; there was in him nothing of the prophet or the mystic. He was a simple soul who loved, and that was all.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
It's about people who still are unaware. Therefore they strive to live by all means: love like no one before them loved, believe like no one ever believed, desire like no one else ever desired...
— Marius Ivaškevičius, Madagaskaras
I BELIEVE EVERYONE IS SPECIAL . . . BUT SOME PEOPLE THINK . . . . IT'S JUST ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING NO-ONE IS
— ASHISH RANJAN
Truth is not a prerequisite for belief, whilst belief is often times a catalyst for searching for one's own truth.
— S.R. Bakshi
We are always hungry and never satisfied because we don’t trust and won’t risk. Can we reach a place where we are satisfied with just enough? You are enough. You have enough. Do not worry about tomorrow. God will provide in our lives just as God provides in the Eucharist.
— Mary DeTurris Poust, Cravings: A Catholic Wrestles with Food, Self-Image, and God
Nothing can stop you from achieving your goal-all true success depends on you- The thing always happens that you really believe in
—  and the belief in a thing makes it happen
Do we believe, or are we just playing Dressing Up?
— T.J. Bowes
You must continue to believe with all your heart. Sometimes belief is all if takes to make something real.
— Morgan Rhodes, Falling Kingdoms
I don't believe that. I don't believe that there are bad things about you. Only things that you think are bad.
— Jessica Sorensen, The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden
I began to see that Wendy had something Tiger Lily hadn't even known she was supposed to have. Of all the things Tiger Lily had thought she might have to be for Peter-strong, brave; to be big and to keep up-she had never thought that the one thing he wanted most from her was simply to show that she believed in him, always and without fail.
— Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily
To make 2013 (or any other)your year, keep it simple:1) Count your blessings first2) Whatever you did last year, Do it better3) Go step by step, One day at a time.4) Create/make your own opportunities.5) Believe in your abilities at all times,6) Qutting is not an option. Keep Going.7) Finish what you started
— Pablo
Do not believe a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization.
— Swami Vivekananda
You know, just because you think bubblegum pop on the radio represents all that is wrong with society, that doesn’t mean there’s not someone out there who needs that shitty pop song. Maybe that shitty pop song makes them feel good, about themselves and the world. And as long as that shitty pop song doesn’t infringe upon your rights to rock out to, I don’t know, Subway Sect, or Siouxsie and the Banshees, or whichever old-ass band it is you worship, then who cares?
— Hannah Harrington, Saving June
You’re not necessarily supposed to believe it…You’re just supposed to believe in it.
— Daniel Wallace, Big Fish