Credence Quotes

I was raised as a Baptist in the Bible Belt of the South. Until the age of 37, I had never heard anyone teach or preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Oh yes, I had heard those scriptures read, more aptly read over, and had read over them myself, but I had never heard anyone try to explain this amazing experience or even give it any credence. ~ Kimberly Eady

Ignorance is never better. I may not like what I learn, but I would rather know the truth than naively give credence to something that does not exist. ~ Connie Brockway

The White House, in advancing the agenda for a [school] "choice" plan, rests its faith on market mechanisms. What reason have the black and very poor to lend their credence to a market system that has proved so obdurate and so resistant to their pleas at every turn? ~ Jonathan Kozol

The type of journalism that relies on the reporter's notion of what does or doesn't "seem" correct or controversial is self-indulgent and irresponsible. It gives credence to the belief that we can intuit our way through all the various decisions we need to make in our lives and it validates the notion that our feelings are a more reliable barometer of reality than the facts. ~ Seth Mnookin

The strenuousness is when,you have to be with and to bear those people who give more importance to the credence over reality. ~ M.H. Rakib

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism - religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

The Yellow Bear made its first appearance bobbing around on the swollen waters after the Great Flood, following which it disappeared for a while. It tended to show up in periods of unusual stress or upheaval. Even though it looked like it had been made in a factory by unskilled labourers, it had been forged in the Cradle of Civilisation and was said to be the product of a collaboration between humans and machines, lending some credence to the belief that machines had been on the planet long before humans were capable of making them. ~ Kathryn Davis

In the secular world, women are also credited with having a sense of good that is intrinsically female, a sense of good that men do not have. This is a frequent feature of contemporary environmentalist or antimilitarist movements. Women are seen to have an inborn commitment to both clean air and peace, a moral nature that abhors pollution and murder. Being good or moral is viewed as a particular biological capacity of women and as a result women are the natural guardians of morality: a moral vanguard as it were. Organizers use this appeal to women all the time. Motherhood is especially invoked as biological proof that women have a special relationship to life, a special sensitivity to its meaning, a special, intuitive knowledge of what is right. Any political group can appropriate the special moral sensibility of women to its own ends: most groups do, usually in place of offering substantive relief to women with respect to sexism in the group itself. Women all along the male-defined political spectrum give special credence to this view of a female biological nature that is morally good. ~ Andrea Dworkin

If we silence those who utter falsehoods, we run the risk of becoming dogmatic, of believing without understanding, or feeling passionate about the evidence supporting our beliefs. We also run the risk that such false beliefs will be given greater credence by the very fact that they are suppressed rather than openly refuted. ~ Nigel Warburton

But if, on the other hand, we should be justified in rejecting it, if there testified on oath, then, supposing our rules of evidence to be sound, we may be excused if we hesitate elsewhere to give it credence. ~ Simon Greenleaf

I give credence to the worst things somebody writes about me, and if somebody writes something nice, I think they're wrong or false or lying or joking. ~ Jesse Eisenberg

When an apologist attempts to be autonomous in his reasoned argumentation he indicates that he considers God to be less certain than his own existence and that he places greater credence in his independent reasoning than in God's Word. ~ Greg L. Bahnsen

I've made a profound transformation. I've fashioned some cyber-underwear. I'm not scared of anything! Actually, I am scared of a few things. Cyber world is a world of adventure, a new galaxy. I'm big on adventure. But I don't assume that just because the word cyber is being used as a prefix, doesn't give it anymore value or credence. Cyber relationships have the illusion of intimacy, sometimes with the absence of intimacy. Is it better to have a conversation in a café or on the telephone? ~ Tom Waits

One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. ~ George Soros

INT. KAMA'S HIDEOUT - EVENING
The interior of KAMA'S hideout is pitch black. The sound of water dripping. A brief shaft of sunlight reveals TINA, sleeping lightly on the floor in her coat.
NEWT: Tina?
She wakes. A moment as NEWT and TINA stare at each other. Each has thought of the other daily for a year. With no sign of KAMA, it seems she has been rescued.
TINA (joyful, disbelieving): Newt!
TINA notices KAMA entering in the background and raising his wand. Her expression changes.
KAMA: Expelliarmus!
NEWT'S wand flies out of his hand into KAMA'S. Bars form across the door, imprisoning them.
KAMA (through the door): My apologies, Mr. Scamander! I shall return and release you when Credence is dead!
TINA: Kama, wait!
KAMA: You see, either he dies . . . or I do.
He claps a hand to his eye.
KAMA: No, no, no, no. Oh no. No, no, no.
He jerks convulsively and slides to the floor, unconscious.
NEWT: Well, that's not the best start to a rescue attempt.
TINA: This was a rescue attempt? You've just lost me my only lead.
JACOB launches for the door, trying to break it down.
NEWT (innocent): Well, how was the interrogation going before we turned up?
TINA throws him a dark look. She strides to the back of the cave.
Pickett, who, unnoticed, has hopped out of NEWT'S pocket, successfully picks the lock, and the bars swing open.
JACOB: Newt!
NEWT: Well done, Pick.
(to TINA) You need thi ~ J.K. Rowling

And as for me, thogh that I can but lyte, On bakes for to rede I me delyte, And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence, And in myn herte have hem in reverence So hertely, that ther is game noon, That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, But hit be seldom, on the holyday; Save, certeynly, when that the month of May Is comen, and that I here the foules singe, And that the floures ginnen for to springe, Farwel my book and my devocion. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

He who travels far will often see things Far removed from what he believed was Truth. When he talks about it in the fields at home, He is often accused of lying, For the obdurate people will not believe What they do not see and distinctly feel. Inexperience, I believe, Will give little credence to my song. ~ Hermann Hesse

My mother said the first boy - or man - is a crush.
You think you love them, but what you really love is how they make you feel. It's not love. It's lust. Lust for attention. Lust for danger. Lust to feel special. (...) The second is to learn about yourself. Your first crush has been crushed. You're sad, but most of all, you're angry. Angry enough to not let it happen again. (...) Love. When the lessons of your weakness with number one and your selfishness with number two sink in, and you find a medium. When you know who you are and you're ready to welcome everything he is, and you're not afraid anymore. ~ Penelope Douglas, Credence.

The argument that there are just wars often rests on the social system of the nation engaging in war. It is supposed that if a 'liberal' state is at war with a 'totalitarian' state, then the war is justified. The beneficent nature of a government was assumed to give rightness to the wars it wages.

...Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were liberals, which gave credence to their words exalting the two world wars, just as the liberalism of Truman made going into Korea more acceptable and the idealism of Kennedy's New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society gave an early glow of righteousness to the war in Vietnam.

What the experience of Athens suggests is that a nation may be relatively liberal at home and yet totally ruthless abroad. Indeed, it may more easily enlist its population in cruelty to others by pointing to the advantages at home. An entire nation is made into mercenaries, being paid with a bit of democracy at home for participating in the destruction of life abroad. ~ Howard Zinn

Black girls are likened more to adults than to children and are treated as if they are willfully engaging in behaviors typically expected of Black women - sexual involvement, parenting or primary caregiving, workforce participation, and other adult behaviors and responsibilities. This compression is both a reflection of deeply entrenched biases that have stripped Black girls of their childhood freedoms and a function of an opportunity-starved social landscape that makes Black girlhood interchangeable with Black womanhood. It gives credence to a widely held perception and a message that there is little difference between the two. ~ Monique Morris

Wall Street banks have used the same tactic that Bush used in the war on terror - fear - and they've basically said that if you don't do what we tell you, the sky will fall. If you don't do what we tell you, it will be the end of capitalism as we know it. The failure of Lehman Brothers lent some credence to those fears. ~ Joseph Stiglitz

him Mirandize the shooter. Rick also knew that his partner had backed him up. He didn't have to ask; he knew. Besides, just the fact that the man had been in the process of robbing the store and had trained his weapon on a police officer, it wouldn't lend much credence to his testimony in front of a jury. And the guy had a record for armed robbery. Rick had found that out when he'd pulled his jacket during booking. Add those all together and he was fairly certain he'd pull through the charges. ~ T.L. Stowe

I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait. ~ Alan Garner

They retained only the faintest recollection of what they had lost and had no desire to believe that they had once been innocent and happy. They derided the mere possibility of this former felicity of theirs and termed it a day-dream. They could not even picture it to themselves in images and forms, but strange and wondrous to relate, having lost any credence in their former happiness, calling it a fairy tale, they so longed to be innocent and happy once more, all over again that, childlike, they fell down before this, their heart's desire, deified it, built temples, and began to worship their own idea, their own 'desire', and tearfully bowed before it in adoration, while at the same time utterly discounting its feasibility or the possibility of its realization. However, had it ever become possible for them to return to the state of happy innocence they had lost, and if someone could have shown it to them again and asked if they wanted to return to it, they would certainly have refused. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

While she was working on Maturity, ... M. Rodin is well aware that people have imagined that he did my sculpture why then do all one can to give credence to these lies. ~ Paul Claudel

I have not given much credence to reviews of my films. Sometimes they're wrong, but it didn't matter to me. ~ Irvin Kershner

Above all, I am anxious to grant no credence whatsoever to the special mythology of "the Enlightenment." Nothing strikes me as more tiresomely vapid than the notion that there is some sort of inherent opposition - or impermeable partition - between faith and reason, or that the modern period is marked by its unique devotion to the latter. One can believe that faith is mere credulous assent to unfounded premises, while reason consists in a pure obedience to empirical fact, only if one is largely ignorant of both. ~ David Bentley Hart

It is the man who all his life has been self-convicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence. ~ William Faulkner

Satellites can see your thoughts, but not through rock,' is like something they might say. In John William's case, it was conscious hyperbole and therefore commentary. At one level, it was reefer-inspired. It was partly for fun. It was other things, too-but not derangement. I give no credence to the interpretation, and I knew him better than anybody. ~ David Guterson

Stop paying or buying into the ideas that don't resonate with the reality you prefer. Stop giving them credence. Appreciate, Appreciate your chosen vibration and allow the vibrations that are not aligned with you to de-preciate. ~ Darryl Anka

And as for me, though that I konne but lyte,
On bokes for to rede I me delyte,
And to hem yive I feyth and ful credence,
And in myn herte have hem in reverence
So hertely, that ther is game noon
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon,
But yt be seldom on the holyday,
Save, certeynly, whan that the month of May
Is comen, and that I here the foules synge,
And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge,
Farewel my bok and my devocioun! ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

But the resurrection without the crucifixion is empty optimism, an optimism that gives credence to Freud's notion that wishful thinking is the sum and substance of our faith. Include the crucifixion
and our role in that bloody moment
and the whole picture changes. ~ Mark Galli

I think the evidence is just so overwhelming that Jesus existed, that it's silly to talk about him not existing. I don't know anyone who is a responsible historian, who is actually trained in the historical method, or anybody who is a biblical scholar who does this for a living, who gives any credence at all to any of this. ~ Bart D. Ehrman

She seems to give a respectful credence to the statement that "God is love"only to hurry on to explore with real interest the possibility that "God is wrath." She can read from the book of Revelation with a ringing conviction in her voice that can make the creation seem only a stage setting for the triumphant thunderation of end. ~ Wendell Berry

I am yet to find one reliable friend in this crowd of shifting strangers. I have no true friends only mimicries, users and loopers. People popping in and out, keeping tabs on my life, not adding much credence to my existence yet not abandoning my life entirely because they know that greatness lies beyond the layers of this muck. It is up to me to discover those who are worth taking on this journey towards my destiny and the ones who will only get in my way. ~ Crystal Evans

We only give credence to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position."
"It seems a cold world without something ... more."
"On the contrary," said Oromis, "it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do, instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won't tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else's notions thrust upon you. You asked after our religion, and I have answered you true. Make of it what you will. ~ Christopher Paolini

The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism. ~ George Jean Nathan

No sooner, in fact, had I sent it off than a curious reaction came over me. It seemed to me that I had given away my capacity for belief in the Willie Hughes theory of the Sonnets, that something had gone out of me, as it were, and that I was perfectly indifferent to the whole subject. What was it that had happened? It is difficult to say, perhaps, by finding perfect expression for a passion I had exhausted the passion itself. Emotional forces, like the forces of physical life, have their positive limitations. Perhaps the mere effort to convert any one to a theory involves some form of renunciation of the power of credence. Perhaps I was simply tired of the whole thing, and, my enthusiasm having burnt out, my reason was left to its own unimpassioned judgment. However it came about, and I cannot pretend to explain it, there was no doubt that Willie Hughes suddenly became to me a mere myth, an idle dream, the boyish fancy of a young man who, like most ardent spirits, was more anxious to convince others than to be himself convinced. ~ Oscar Wilde

One of the first books of travel, giving European readers some insight into the unfamiliar world of the Orient, was published in 1356-67 in Anglo-Norman French. Called simply Travels, it was said to be by Sir John Mandeville, but a French historian, Jean d'Outremeuse, may well have written the book. It is a highly entertaining guide for pilgrims to the Holy Land, but goes beyond, taking the reader as far as Tartary, Persia, India and Egypt, recounting more fantasy than fact, but containing geographical details to give the work credence.

Mandeville's book whetted the Western European reader's appetite for the travel book as a journal of marvels: dry scientific detail was not what these readers wanted. Rather it was imagination plus information. Thus, myths of 'the fountain of youth' and of gold-dust lying around 'like ant-hills' caught the Western imagination, and, when the voyagers of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries found 'new worlds' in the Americas, these myths were enlarged and expanded, as Eldorado joined the Golden Road to Samarkand in the imagination of readers concerning distant lands. ~ Ronald Carter

Ultimately our claim to know the one God only gains credence in the contemporary world as he demonstrates the divine presence through the way we live- through our lives as we connect our Christian belief with true Christian living. ~ Stanley J. Grenz

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams ... Man ... is above all the plaything of his memory. ~ Andre Breton

Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.

The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)

Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.

Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--t ~ David Mitchell

Most investors give too much credence to the theory that prices are rational; they presume that a market collapse must have been justified by serious economic trouble. ~ Kenneth Fisher

The will not to believe. It is simple human nature. When the mind cannot grasp or face up to a horrible fact it turns away, as though refusing credence will conjure away the reality. ~ Herman Wouk

Giving credence to persistent intuitions awakens the dormant heart consciousness. ~ Steven Redhead

We need to give credence to the nonsexual relationships ... the idea of having significant others instead of a significant other. ~ Sasha Cagen

Be careful not to give too much credence to the old adage that time heals. Mark my word. It's God that heals. Time only tells. ~ Beth Moore

There is a notion gaining credence that the free market breaks down national barriers, and that corporate globalization's ultimate destination is a hippie paradise where the heart is the only passport and we all live together happily inside a John Lennon song (Imagine there's no country ... ). This is a canard. ~ Arundhati Roy

It's hard to explain how much that feeling of the bottom potentially falling out at any moment takes its toll. It makes you anxious, of course, and constant anxiety is impossible for the body to handle. So you develop a coping mechanism, and for us that meant shutting down. Everything we liked or wanted or felt joy in had to be hidden or suppressed. I'm sad to say that this method works. If you don't give as much credence or value to whatever it is that you love, it hurts less when it is inevitably taken from you. I had to pretend I had no joy. It will come as a shock to people who know me now, but being able to express joy was something it took me a long time to be confident enough to do. ~ Alan Cumming

And in that I cannot send unto you all my businesses in writing, I despatch these present bearers fully informed in all things, to whom it may please you to give faith and credence in what they shall say unto you by word of mouth. ~ Owen Glendower

It's not supposed to make you distracted from your life, it's supposed to make you challenge the ongoing distraction with focused intention. Simply discussing how asleep we can be gives credence to the possibility of finding moments of true honest alertness. ~ Dan Mangan

Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God
imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant
and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave? ~ Richard Dawkins

Ane fals intent under ane fair pretence
Hes causit mony innocent for to de.
Grit folie is to gif over-sone credence
To all that speiks fairlie unto the. ~ Robert Henryson

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Crossan also gives credence to what he calls the Cross Gospel. "Does that fare any better?" I asked. "No, most scholars don't give it credibility, because it includes such outlandishly legendary material. For instance, Jesus comes out of his tomb and he's huge - he goes up beyond the sky - and the cross comes out of the tomb and actually talks! Obviously, the much more sober gospels are more reliable than anything found in this account. It fits better with later apocryphal writings. In fact, it's dependent on biblical material, so it should be dated later. ~ Lee Strobel

It is not fair to call Erdogan a "political prostitute"! because prostitutes rent their bodies, unlike Erdogan who is selling all Muslims Credence to Israel by price and route of the gas pipeline to Europe. ~ Jahanshah Safari

TINA: I'll have to go to the Ministry with what I've got.
(a wobble in her voice) It was nice to see you again, Mr. Scamander.
She strides from the room, leaving NEWT perplexed and upset.

INT. FLAMEL HOUSE, HALLWAY - AFTERNOON
JACOB follows TINA into the hall.
JACOB: Hey, hold on one second, will you? Well, hold on! Wait! Tina!
She leaves. As the front door closes, NEWT appears at the drawing room door.
JACOB: (to NEWT)
You didn't mention salamanders, did you?
NEWT: No, she just - ran. I don't know . . .
JACOB (firm): So you chase after her!
NEWT grabs his case. He leaves.

EXT. RUE DE MONTMORENCY - END OF DAY
TINA is hurrying up the road. NEWT hastens to catch up.
NEWT: Tina. Please, just listen to me -
TINA: Mr. Scamander, I need to go talk to the Ministry - and I know how you feel about Aurors -
NEWT: I may have been a little strong in the way that I expressed myself in that letter -
TINA: What was the exact phrase? "A bunch of careerist hypocrites"?
NEWT: I'm sorry, but I can't admire people whose answer to everything that they fear or misunderstand is "kill it"!
TINA: I'm an Auror and I don't -
NEWT: Yes, and that's because you've gone middle head!
TINA (stopping): Excuse me?
NEWT: It's an expression derived from the three heads of the Runespoor. The middle one is the visionary. Every Auror in Europe wants Credence dead - except you. You've gone mi ~ J.K. Rowling

I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you. Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words No undue credence: for I say that kings Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud, And doing thus are happier than those Who live calm pious lives day after day All divinity Is built-up from our good and evil luck. ~ Euripides

I think most people are aware of the garbage in the tabloids and don't give them a lot of credence. ~ Nancy Sinatra

There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half credence in the supernatural, by coincidences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

If you believed in something strongly and give it enough credence, it could appear right in front of you. Though it had been created in your mind, it would claim a presence in the real world, a monster at your door, a demon pulling at your coat sleeve. ~ Alice Hoffman

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own.
When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right.
Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order.
We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death.
And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him.
[excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968 ~ Rod Serling

The lack of imagination or invention most people display in naming pussies is almost beyond credence. ~ Carl Van Vechten

The tales of pure terror, of course, are completely naturalistic in their content, and must stand or fall by their merit alone. But what about the supernatural stories? Can we, the children of a scientific age, give any credence to these medleys of devils, ghosts, and other psychical invasions? There is only one answer: we can and do. We are dealing with stories, not with scientific dissertations. And if, as stories, they have the ring of truth, we'll believe them, as stories, implicitly.
("Introduction") ~ Herbert A. Wise

Except in a few well-publicized instances (enough to lend credence to the iconography painted on the walls of the media), the rigorous practice of rugged individualism usually leads to poverty, ostracism and disgrace. The rugged individualist is too often mistaken for the misfit, the maverick, the spoilsport, the sore thumb. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance

amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of
life

amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant

I must soon declare my own war on their war
I must hold to my last piece of ground
I must protect the small space I have made that has
allowed me life

my life not their death
my death not their death

this place, this time, now
I vow to the sun
that I will laugh the good laugh once again
in the perfect place of me
forever.

their death not my life. ~ Charles Bukowski

People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band. ~ Charles Portis

There are tree main bulwarks of defence against new thoughts: to pay no heed, to give no credence, and finally to assert that it had already long existed. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

For God is so desirous that the government and direction of every man should be undertaken by another man like himself, and that every man should be ruled and governed by natural reason, that He earnestly desires us not to give entire credence to the things that He communicates to us supernaturally, nor to consider them as being securely and completely confirmed until they pass through this human aqueduct of the mouth of man. ~ Juan De La Cruz