quotations about belief
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
MAX BORN
attributed, The New Intimacy
Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.
GENE WOLFE
The Shadow of the Torturer
What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
Belief needs something terrible to make it work, I find--blood, nails, a bit of anguish.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them.
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
If you only believe when it's easy, you don't really believe.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly
Oftimes our belief, if in another, we would regard a superstition.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing them becomes too high.
RANSOM RIGGS
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through,
And all too narrow for the broadening soul,
Give me the fine, firm texture of the new,
Fair, beautiful and whole!
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Old and New"
Belief is the way
The way of the innocent
And when I say innocent
I should say naive
DEPECHE MODE
"Lie to Me"
Most people are too slow to believe, but once you get them going, they believe too much.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
There can be no merit in believing something which you can neither explain nor understand.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Whether your beliefs are true or totally insane, if you accept them, then that's what your life will be about.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Beyond Positive Thinking
Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Declaration of Rights"
Belief was immune to logic; it operated by its own laws.
JAMES SIEGEL
Detour
Creeds, like other goods, pass by inheritance to descendants.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
The less you know the more you believe.
U2
"Last Night on Earth"