Belief

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Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.

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Sourced [edit]

  • ...and what is meant by believing in Christ but just going with trusting and loving hearts, and committing to His love and power ourselves, our souls, and all that concerns us for time and eternity!
  • Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it … or because it is traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings—that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
    • Attributed to Buddha in Life (March 7, 1955), p. 102. Reported in unverified in his writings in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • Ideo credendum quod incredibile.
    • It is believable because unbelievable.
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Quoting Tertullian.
  • For fools are stubborn in their way,
    As coins are harden'd by th' allay;
    And obstinacy's ne'er so stiff
    As when 'tis in a wrong belief.
  • No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign and believe there by the grace of God alone!
  • Believe, and if thy belief be right, that insight which gradually transmutes faith into knowledge will be the reward of that belief.
  • He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed.
  • I would rather work with five people who really believe in what they are doing rather than five hundred who can't see the point.
  • People want to believe in something-even if they know it is false.
  • He who believes needs no explanation.
  • He does not believe that does not live according to his belief
  • What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
  • Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
    • William James, in "Is Life Worth Living?" The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
  • Believing something to be true is a complicated affair. It may consist in taking something to be true, pure and simple; or it may consist in believing, but not knowing, something to be true—that is, entertaining doubts about its truth. In the former case the difference between belief and knowledge may not arise. It does in the latter.
  • To succeed, we must first believe that we can.
    • Michael Korda, as quoted in Marketing Construction Services (2000) by Paul Pryor, p. 14.
  • Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for—because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.
    • Peter Marshall, Senate chaplain, prayer offered at the opening of the session (April 18, 1947); reported in Prayers Offered by the Chaplain, the Rev. Peter Marshall, 1947–1948 (1949), p. 20, Senate Doc. 80–170.
  • Belief is a beautiful armor, but makes for the heaviest sword; like punching underwater, you never can hit who you're trying for.
  • Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
  • Incrédules les plus crédules. Ils croient les miracles de Vespasien, pour ne pas croire ceux de Mose.
    • The incredulous are the most credulous. They believe the miracles of Vespasian that they may not believe those of Moses.
    • Blaise Pascal, Pensèes (1669), II, XVII. 120.
  • If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I've seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.
  • To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched. To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do any thing that is worth the doing.
  • Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
    • Bertrand Russell, in "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" in Unpopular Essays (1950).
  • A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.
  • For the heart, it needs to believe.
  • One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world.
  • For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.
    • Franz Werfel, as quoted in Philippine Studies (1953) by Ateneo de Manila, p. 269; also in Everest: The Mountaineering History (2000) by Walt Unsworth, p. 100
  • Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
  • There littleness was not; the least of things
    Seemed infinite; and there his spirit shaped
    Her prospects, nor did he believe,—He saw.
  • One solace yet remains for us who came
    Into this world in days when story lacked
    Severe research, that in our hearts we know
    How, for exciting youth's heroic flame,
    Assent is power, belief the soul of fact.
    • William Wordsworth, Memorials of a Tour in Italy (1837), IV ("story" refers to History).
  • What ardently we wish, we soon believe.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VII, Part II, line 1311.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations [edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 66-67.
  • Fere libenter homines id, quod volunt, credunt.
    • Men willingly believe what they wish.
    • Julius Caesar, Bellum Gallicum, III, 18.
  • There is no unbelief;
    Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
    And waits to see it push away the clod,
    He trusts in God.
  • Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
  • Credat Judæus Apella non ego.
    • The Jew Apella may believe this, not I.
    • Horace, Satires, I. 5. 100.
  • Better trust all and be deceived,
    And weep that trust, and that deceiving,
    Than doubt one heart that, if believed,
    Had blessed one's life with true believing.
  • O thou, whose days are yet all spring,
    Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving;
    Experience is a dumb, dead thing;
    The victory's in believing.
  • They believed—faith, I'm puzzled—I think I may call
    Their belief a believing in nothing at all,
    Or something of that sort; I know they all went
    For a general union of total dissent.
  • A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.
  • Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
  • Tarde quæ credita lædunt credimus.
    • We are slow to believe what if believed would hurt our feelings.
    • Ovid, Heroides, II. 9.
  • And when religious sects ran mad,
    He held, in spite of all his learning,
    That if a man's belief is bad,
    It will not be improved by burning.
  • Do not believe what I tell you here any more than if it were some tale of a tub.
    • François Rabelais, Works, Book IV, Chapter XXXVIII. ("Tale of a Tub," title of a work of Swift's).
  • I have believed the best of every man,
    And find that to believe it is enough
    To make a bad man show him at his best,
    Or even a good man swing his lantern higher.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers [edit]

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • Begin by regarding every thing from a moral point of view, and you will end by believing in God.
  • The man who goes through life with an uncertain doctrine not knowing what he believes, what a poor, powerless creature he is! He goes around through the world as a man goes down through the street with a poor, wounded arm, forever dodging people he meets on the street for fear they may touch him.
  • If that impression does not remain on this intrepid and powerful people, into whose veins all nations pour their mingling blood, it will be our immense calamity. Public action, without it, will lose the dignity of consecration. Eloquence, without it, will miss what is loftiest, will give place to a careless and pulseless disquisition, or fall to the flatness of political slang. Life, without it, will lose its sacred and mystic charm. Society, without it, will fail of inspirations, and be drowned in an animalism whose rising tides will keep pace with its wealth.

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