Belief Quotes

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

G.C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German physicist, writer

When once a man is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine does but confirm him in his faith.

The world “belief” is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it I don’t need to believe it.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychiatrist.

There are those who feel an imperative need to believe, for whom the values of a belief are proportionate, not to its truth, but to its definiteness. Incapable of either admitting the existence of coutrary judgments or of suspending their own, they supply the place of knowledge by turning other men’s conjectures into dogmas.

C.E. M.Joad (1891-1953) British author, academic.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Anglo-Irish satirist.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.

Demosthenes.

There are many great truths which we do not deny, and which nevertheless we do not fully believe.

J.W. Alexander.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head or a very short creed.

Colton.

There are three means of believing, by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational system, admits none for its sons who do not believe according to inspiration.

Pascal.

A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believes things, only on the authority of others without other reason, then, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes heresy.

Milton.

Remember that what you believe will depend very much upon what you are.

Noah Porter.

Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man’s doxy.

Bp. Warburton.

We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.

Ovid.

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.

Froude.

You believe easily what you hope for earnestly.

Terence.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Watts.

In belief lies the secret of all valuable exertion.

Bulwer.

A skeptical young man one day, conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed, that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. “Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man’s I know.”

I am not afraid of those tender and scrupulous consciences who are ever cautions of professing and believing too much; if they are sincerely wrong, I forgive their errors and respect their integrity. The men I am afraid of are those who believe everything, subscribe to everything, and vote for everything.

Shipley.

He who expects men to be always as good as their beliefs, indulges a ground less hope; and he who expects men to be always as bad as their beliefs, vexes himself with a needless fear.

J.S. Kieffer.

It is a singular fact that many men of action incline to the theory of fatalism, while the greater part of men of thought believe in a divine providence.

Balzac.

Newton, Pascal, Bossuet, Ravine, Fenelon, that is to say some of the most enlightened men on earth, in the most philosophical of all ages, have been believers in Jesus Christ; and the great Conde, when dying, repeated these noble words, “ Yes I shall see God as he is, face to face!”.

Vauvenargues.