Quotations About Belief

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it. ~Ezra Pound

This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question. ~Orson Scott Card

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment. ~Seneca

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little. ~Antonio Porchia, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.,The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872

He does not believe who does not live according to his belief. ~Thomas Fuller

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878

He who does not know how to believe, should not know. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. ~Felix Cohen

Few really believe. The most only believe that they believe or even make believe. ~John Lancaster Spalding

Men never do evil so thoroughly and cheerfully as when they do it for conscience sake. ~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

Not... opinions are held, but... how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, liberal opinions are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. ~Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950

When I believe in nothing I do not want to meet you when you believe in nothing. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right. ~Laurens van der Post

Some things have to be believed to be seen. ~Ralph Hodgson, The Skylark and Other Poems Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never the correctness, of a belief. ~Arthur Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, 1932

It is easier to believe than to doubt. ~E.D. Martin, The Meaning of a Liberal Education

Man tends to treat all his opinions as principles. ~Herbert Agar