Unquestioning Belief Quotes

The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a merely human production. This belief enters into the very depth of my conscience. The whole history of man proves it. ~ Daniel Webster

Heavenly Father, I will always call on you, I know you will answer. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

True, my boy. Only Hashem is omniscient, and until He decides we're worthy of His communication via prophets or the Messiah, we mortals are forced to live in a state of ignorance. I've spent my whole life learning, Detective, acquiring knowledge not only from the scriptures of my belief, but from countless other sources - American law, philosophy, psychology, economics, political science: I have studied them all at great length. Yet, a madman can slip under my nose, and I realize I know nothing. I am still a meaningless speck of dust in the scheme of things. A most humbling experience. ~ Faye Kellerman

Belief and order give strength. Have to clear rubble before you can build. ~ Robert Jordan

Don't forget to balance optimism with fact and belief with reality. ~ Joe Kraus

The Way of Liberation is not a belief system; it is something to be put into practice. ~ Adyashanti

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe! ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Arguments for atheism can be divided into two main categories: those that dispute the existence of god and those that demonstrate the ill effects of religion. It might be better if I broadened this somewhat, and said those that dispute the existence of an intervening god. Religion is, after all, more than the belief in a supreme being. It is the cult of that supreme being and the belief that his or her wishes have been made known or can be determined. Defining matters in this way, I can allow myself to mention great critics such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, who perhaps paradoxically regarded religion as an insult to god. ~ Christopher Hitchens

As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities. ~ Voltaire

If we, as individuals, want to keep control of our democracy - rather than have a government paid for by corporate interest checks - then we have to fight back now and make sure our system reflects the belief that people, not corporations, control our democracy. ~ Michael Bennet

Thus did I receive, through the singing of these various hymns and the moral education that accompanied them, not only a religious, but a political schooling of sorts. For though the intertwining of morality and politics does not necessarily make for a clear understanding of the cynicism that governs world affairs., it does engender impatience with and a rejection of this cynicism, and a real belief in a more perfect, less unjust world. And though I regret not having been taught more about the real world, I have never regretted being taught this kind of morality first. ~ Jean Said Makdisi

Islam undoubtedly deserves respect. It has some things in common with Christianity, such as Abraham as a common progenitor, and the belief in only one God. ~ Walter Kasper

Nowadays, you form your beliefs to fit your behavior, not the other way around. ~ Judith Martin

Unbelief is a belief. ~ J.M. Coetzee

After all, deep in every Texan's heart, there remains the steadfast belief that any problem can be solved with a big enough gun. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just ... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this? ~ Steven Weinberg

I like the notion of guiding, because I can offer advice through my own experiences, tastes and beliefs. But it's all in that individual's hands. ~ Erol Alkan

What's the Christian-bashing all about? Simple- a struggle for the soul of America is under way, a struggle to determine whose views, values, beliefs and standards will serve as the basis of law. ~ Pat Buchanan

Over-attachment for one's close relatives is simply born of ignorance. Every creature in the world is born alone and dies alone. He experiences the results of his own good and evil deeds and in the end leaves the present body to accept another. The belief that one person is the relation of another is nothing more than illusion. ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

Jesus' military career has never compelled my belief. ~ Wendell Berry

Pierre Trudeau dreamed of a society that afforded all of its citizens an equal opportunity to succeed in life
whatever their background or beliefs, whether rich or poor, ~ Jean Chretien

To wait, biblically speaking, is not to assume the worst, worry, make demands, or take control. Nor is waiting doing nothing. It is a sustained effort to stay focused on God through prayer and belief. To wait is to "rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him" (Psalm 37:7). ~ Max Lucado

I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger-lane this morning ... I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it, faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks and language, of the assembled spectators ... When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgment, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world, and there were no belief among men but that they perished like beasts. ~ Charles Dickens

Hate is at war with love! fire is at war with earth! friends are at war with friends! belief is at war with belief! the world is hostage to destruction! ~ M..

If you believe the noises of the world, rather than the silences of your soul, you will be lost. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

They are tragic,' said Vetinari, 'and we laugh at their tragedy as we laugh at our own. The painted grin leers out at us from the darkness, mocking our insane belief in order, logic, status, the reality of reality. The mask knows that we are born on the banana skin that leads only to the open manhole cover of doom, and all we can hope for are the cheers of the crowd. ~ Terry Pratchett

How miserable a solipsist is! It is rather senseless for him to even assert his belief in solipsism, for, on the one hand, if his belief is false it is like committing intellectual suicide, and, on the other hand, if his belief is true it is an act of intellectual insanity. ~ Kedar Joshi

What you call life is but a dream, and reality is relative. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

What we see in the outer is but a reflection of the inner, because we surround ourselves with a picture of our own beliefs. In other words, we manifest in general what we seriously think and believe. So if we want to find out what our habitual thinking is like, we have but to look around us and ask ourselves what we really see. ~ Emmet Fox

What fascinates me - and what serves as a central theme of this book - is why we make the choices we do. What separates us from the world we have and the kind of ethical universe envisioned by someone like Havel? What prompts one person to act boldly in a moment of crisis and a second to seek shelter in the crowd? Why do some people become stronger in the face of adversity while others quickly lose heart? What separates the bully from the protector? Is it education, spiritual belief, our parents, our friends, the circumstances of our birth, traumatic events, or more likely some combination that spells the difference? More succinctly, do our hopes for the future hinge on a desirable unfolding of external events or some mysterious process within? ~ Madeleine K. Albright

Visiting any shop for the first time is exciting. There's always that buzz as you push open the door; that hope; that belief - that this is going to be the shop of all shops, which will bring you everything you ever wanted, at magically low prices. ~ Sophie Kinsella

I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators - Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists - Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer. ~ Alan Lee (artist)

So much time is spent on belief. So little time is spent on love! ~ Akiane Kramarik

One morning, waking out of deep sleep, she had, like James Anderson a few hours ago, humbly recognized her knowledge, and known herself mistaken until now, and a follower of the path of least resistance. For unbelief was easier than belief, much less demanding and subtly flattering because the agnostic felt himself to be intellectually superior to the believer. And then unbelief haunted by faith, as she knew by experience, produced a rather pleasant nostalgia, while belief haunted by doubt involved real suffering; that she knew now by intuition, soon probably she would know it by experience also. One had to be haunted by one or the other, she imagined, and to make the choice if only subconsciously. She was ashamed that subconsciously she had chosen not to suffer. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

If an ontology predicts almost nothing it ends up explaining almost nothing, and there's no reason to believe it. ~ Sean Carroll

One person with a belief is worth 99 people who have only interests. ~ John Stuart Mill

To be clear: an ideology is a belief system with an inadequate basis in reality; a religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. ~ Martin Amis

There are billions of people in this world that don't believe or act exactly as we do. It is not our place to reject them, only accept them. Again, we don't have to agree with everything they believe or do, but we do need to love and accept who they are. ~ Daniel Willey

Apart from all this, I do of course have a real life. I sometimes have trouble believing in it, because it doesn't seem like the kind of life I could ever get away with, or deserve. This goes along with another belief of mine: that everyone my age is an adult, whereas I m merely in disguise. ~ Margaret Atwood

Olympianism is the characteristic belief system of today's secularist, and it has itself many of the features of a religion. For one thing, the fusion of political conviction and moral superiority into a single package resembles the way in which religions (outside liberal states) constitute comprehensive ways of life supplying all that is necessary (in the eyes of believers) for salvation. Again, the religions with which we are familiar are monotheistic and refer everything to a single center. In traditional religions, this is usually God; with Olympianism, it is society, understood ultimately as including the whole of humanity. And Olympianism, like many religions, is keen to proselytize. Its characteristic mode of missionary activity is journalism and the media.

If Olympianism has the character of a religion, as I am suggesting, there would be no mystery about its hostility to Christianity. Real religions (by contrast with test-tube religions such as ecumenism) don't much like each other; they are, after all, competitors. Olympianism, however, is in the interesting position of being a kind of religion which does not recognize itself as such, and indeed claims a cognitive superiority to religion in general. But there is a deeper reason why the spread of Olympianism may be measured by the degree of Christophobia. It is that Olympianism is an imperial project which can only be hindered by the association between Christianity and the West. ~ Kenneth Minogue

I am lost in the living, in the acceptance
of rain filling a bucket,

in the belief
that the chemical burn was a washing

for the exodus
and the smoke rising through the chimneys

into the pale blue morning was a love song.
There are days when I wake

and find my face is a hole
and I have nowhere to hang my mask.

from "The Emptiness ~ Carl Adamshick

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. ~ Richard Dawkins

Perhaps most important for nomads was the belief in the symbiosis that existed between wolf and humans on the steppe. Wolves were an integral part of keeping the balance of nature, ensuring that plagues of rabbits and rodents didn't break out, which in turn protected the all-important pasture for the nomads' herds. ~ Tim Cope

All over the world, belief in the supernatural has authorised the sacrifice of people to propitiate bloodthirsty gods, and the murder of witches for their malevolent powers. ~ Steven Pinker