Servetus Belief Quotes

Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed," he said. "And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses."
"Excuses, eh?" Well, if this ain't cynicism, what is?" Erens snorted.
"Yes, excuses," he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. "I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing. ~ Iain M. Banks

Because our consciousness doesn't die at death, we carry our mind-set of thoughts and beliefs with us to the other side. As in life, so in death. When we cross over into the other dimensions, we continue to create experiences through our thoughts, the same way we did in life. ~ James Van Praagh

So i say, change the base! If you change the base, anybody will be as tall as anybody else! My belief is poverty is not caused by poor ppl. Poverty is caused by the system. Poverty is caused by the policies that we pursue. ~ Muhammad Yunus

It is my belief that children are full of understanding and know as much as and more than adults, until they are about seven, when they suddenly become stupid, like adults. ~ Doris Lessing

Global consciousness is not an objective belief that can be taught to anybody and everybody, but a subjective transformation in the interior structures that can hold belief in the first place, which itself is the product of a long line of inner consciousness development. ~ Ken Wilber

The core belief that drives terrorism is the notion of a "holy place," along with the idea that some people belong there and other people don't. That's why the only solution to terrorism is for religious scholars to hold a global summit to agree on the definition of "holy place." Once they agree on a definition, it will be easier to mock it into submission. ~ Scott Adams

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. ~ Eric Hoffer

As we meditate regularly, we let go of the conditioned beliefs and accumulated physical and mental toxicity that cloud our perception of our essential, unbounded nature. ~ Deepak Chopra

People's belief in their own local reality-tunnels keep us all far stupider than we ought to be ... ~ Robert Anton Wilson

There's a belief that wherever your Ancestors took shape from the sticks and stones that formed them, that's home. Ancestors from the coast leave their mark, Ancestors from the mountains, from the desert, they all leave their mark on the genes. When you come home, the genes rejoice. ~ Kate Wilhelm

Yet I have discovered that if all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief ... ~ Michael Crichton

The thing the Buddhists and the Sufis have in common is a belief that religious certainties are destructive. ~ Luke Rhinehart

It is my belief that all gods are stories, or at least the ideas behind stories, but stories or ideas that have become in some way almost alive and aware. ~ Alan Moore

The great GOD is a tower of refuge to the poor.
The great GOD is a tower of refuge to the needy in distress. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A man's real belief is that which he lives by. What a man believes is the thing he does, not the thing he thinks. ~ George MacDonald

Enormous self-belief, intuition, the ability to take a risk at a critical moment and go in for a very dangerous play with counter-chances for the opponent - it is precisely these qualities that distinguish great players. ~ Garry Kasparov

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. ~ Milton Friedman

Creation is too grand, complex, and mysterious to be captured in a narrow creed. That is why we cherish individual freedom of belief. ~ William F. Schulz

If there is something intangible about mental illness generally, depression is all the harder to define because it tends to creep in rather than announce itself, manifesting itself as an absence - of appetite, energy, sociability - rather than as a presence. There is little you can point to: no obscene rantings, no sudden flips into unrecognizable, hyper-energize behavior, no magical belief systems involving lottery numbers or fortune cookies. It seems to me that we are suspicious of depression's claim to legitimacy in party because it doesn't look crazy. ~ Daphne Merkine

I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can't quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death. ~ Marya Hornbacher

A superstitious belief which embraces an error keeps the possibility open that the truth may come to arouse it; but when the truth is there, and the superstitious mode of apprehending it transforms it into a lie, no saving awakening is possible. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Science moves with the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty. ~ James D. Watson

I strongly believe that the best partnerships aren't necessarily dependent on a mere common goal or religious belief but on a shared path to ecstasy. ~ Lebo Grand

Being a scientist means that you should be able to put your faith to the test, and be willing to surrender it should evidence so require. But it does not mean we have no beliefs. In fact, the very discipline of science is based on the belief that the world is comprehensible, and even more audaciously, that it is mathematically describable. The thing about scientific beliefs is that they are not arbitrary. They're not just random opinions we plucked out of the sky; we came to them through observation and experience, and so far, these beliefs have always been vindicated. ~ Tasneem Zehra Husain

Astrid and Taylor didn't like each other much. But Taylor was an extremely valuable person to have around. She had the ability to instantly transport herself from place to place. To "bounce," as she called it.
The enmity between them went back to Astrid's belief that Taylor had a crush of major proportions on Sam. No doubt Taylor would figure she had a golden opportunity now.
Not Sam's type, Astrid told herself. Taylor was pretty but a bit younger, and not nearly tough enough for Sam, who, despite what he might be thinking right now, liked strong, independent girls.
Brianna would be more Sam's style, probably. Or maybe Dekka, if she were straight.
Astrid shoved the list away irritably. Why was she torturing herself like this? Sam was a jerk. But he would come around. He would realize sooner or later that Astrid was right. He would apologize. And he'd move back in. ~ Michael Grant

Though violent action is sometimes associated with nihilism, what makes such activity nihilistic, it seems, is the belief that ultimately nothing will come out of it. When nihlists throw themselves into activity it is with the understanding that its only goal is the expression and dissipation of their life's energy. Any creative product will eventually be consumed by decay. Since there is nothing that humans can do to mend the separation between themselves and reality, they can never actualize their supreme standards of worth and value. This world must remain substandard no matter what we do to try and change the situation. ~ John Marmysz

It was foreordained that I should go alone to Umvelos', and in the promptings of my own infallible heart I believed I saw the workings of Omnipotence. Such is our moral arrogance, and yet without such a belief I think that mankind would have ever been content to bide sluggishly at home. ~ John Buchan

I believe that all genial classrooms share at least five characteristics that guide their instruction regardless of content or grade level. These characteristics are (1) freedom to choose, (2) open-ended exploration, (3) freedom from judgment, (4) honoring every student's experience, and (5) belief in every student's genius. ~ Thomas Armstrong

Responsibility and respect of others and their religious beliefs are also part of freedom. ~ Horst Koehler

Any faith that does not command the one who holds it is not a real belief; it is a pseudo belief only. And it might shock some of us profoundly if we were brought suddenly face to face with our beliefs and forced to test them in the fires of practical living. ~ A.W. Tozer

The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare. ~ Adyashanti

Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

The tragedy of her father's absence had never actually been an acutely tragic event for her. As she grew up and came to understand the world, he was a part of it. An already dead part. His absence was the landscape of her family. Increasingly, as the years went on, she didn't really know what she was missing, but that didn't stop her from missing it. She fixated on him. She prayed to him. She attempted to research him, found obscure publications of his in scientific journals. The language was so formal, she could barely understand it. But she told herself, This is familiar. This is mine, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. She thought, There was a feeling he had, when he wrote this, when he was alive. He communicated it to me, even though everyone who reads this article only gets a lot of information about this scientific test subject, and his reaction to all these oils. She dreamed her father was still out there [ . . . though] her belief that her father was still living did not stop her from telling stories about his death. ~ Lydia Netzer

It is my belief God sends the solution first and the problem later, replied Dr. Javid. ~ Malala Yousafzai

It's outrageous, one woman said, but without belief. What was it about this that made us feel we deserved it? When ~ Margaret Atwood

Live free or die.
Four words. Thirteen letters. Ridges, bumps, swirls under my fingertips.
Another story. We cling tightly to it, and our belief turns it to truth. ~ Lauren Oliver

People underestimate the stars and the connectedness they bring between spirit and matter. More often than not, when lost, we seek solitude in staring into the darkness hoping something speaks back to us, usually through a feeling, a thought or a rare occurrence of a shooting star. ~ Nikki Rowe

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

Gods can do anything. They fear nothing: they are gods. There is one rule, one Seal of Solomon that can confound a god, and to which all gods pay service, to the letter: when belief in a god dies, the god dies. ~ Harlan Ellison

There can be no doubt that the promise of greater freedom has become one of the most effective weapons of socialist propaganda and that the belief that socialism would bring freedom is genuine and sincere. But this would only heighten the tragedy if it should prove that what was promised to us as the Road to Freedom was in fact the High Road to Servitude. Unquestionably, the promise of more freedom was responsible for luring more and more liberals along the socialist road, for blinding them to the conflict which exists between the basic principles of socialism and liberalism, and for often enabling socialists to usurp the very name of the old party of freedom. Socialism was embraced by the greater part of the intelligentsia as the apparent heir of the liberal tradition: therefore it is not surprising that to them the idea of socialism's leading to the opposite of liberty should appear inconceivable. ~ Friedrich Hayek

Our philosophy precedes from the belief that sport is an inalienable part of the educational process and a factor for promoting peace, friendship, cooperation and understanding among peoples. ~ Juan Antonio Samaranch

Everybody has magic, it's just that most people either don't know it, or don't believe it. ~ Rebecca McNutt

The Id and the Superego are more scientific ways of considering the Devil and God, or your personal angels and demons. Science has turned the relationship between God, the Devil and you into a viewpoint for all to understand without the framework of religious belief to sidetrack the layperson into another realm of thinking. ~ Stephen Biro

One of the strengths of the belief in Antinous was its appeal to the most sensitive and inward of mystical natures as well as to the exuberant, joyous and ecstatic sides of human experience. ~ Royston Lambert

It's effortless to let go of self-absorbed people. It's challenging to let go of someone you care about and it's exceedingly difficult to let go of an ideal and a belief in someone because what exacerbates the disappointment of finding out they weren't who they presented themselves to be, is the betrayal of it. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details-the blade of grass, the Conus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom-also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist. ~ Owen Gingerich

The parson refused to believe the Apothecary could help, said the monster. When times were easy, the parson nearly destroyed the Apothecary, but when the going grew tough, he was willing to throw aside every belief if it would save his daughters.
"So?" Conor said. "So would anyone! So would everyone! What did you expect him to do? ~ Patrick Ness

Describe for me, if you can, the nature of this wisdom.'

Anomander snorted impatiently. 'Wisdom is surrender.'

'To what?'

'Complexity.'

'To what end?'

'Swallow it down, spit it out in small measures, to make palatable what many may not otherwise comprehend.'

'An arrogant pose, First Son.'

'I do not claim it, Azathanai, just as I refuse for myself the notion of rule. And, in the name of worship, I am lost in doubt, if not outright disbelief.'

'And why is that?'

'Power does not confer wisdom, nor rightful authority, nor faith in either of the two. If it offers a caress, so too can it by force make one kneel. The former is by nature suspect, while the latter - well, it can at least be said that it does not disguise its truth.'

'You learn for liberty.'

'If I do, then I am the greater fool, because liberty is not in itself a virtue. It wins nothing but the false belief in one's own utterly unassailable independence. even the beasts will not plunge to that depth. No, if I yearn for anything, it is for responsibility. An end to the evasions, the lies spoken in the mind and the lies spoken to others, the endless game of deeds without blame, and all the causes of seeming justice behind which hide venal desires. I yearn for the coward's confession, and understand me well here, Caladan: we are all cowards. ~ Steven Erikson