Sunday, January 25, 2009 – Believing in Things
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. ~ James Harvey Robinson
We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. ~ H. L. Mencken
What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free? ~ Emile M. Cioran
Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. ~ Felix Cohen
Few really believe. The most only believe that they believe or even make believe. ~ John Lancaster Spalding
Men never do evil so thoroughly and cheerfully as when they do it for conscience sake. ~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670
Man tends to treat all his opinions as principles. ~ Herbert Agar
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. ~ Bertrand Russell
More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much. ~ Phineas T. Barnum
Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. ~ Tom Robbins
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when at age six my mother took me to a department store to see him and he asked me for my autograph. ~ Shirley Temple
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. ~ Thomas Paine
One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. ~ Alfred Korzybski
The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept. ~ D. H. Lawrence
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. ~ G. K. Chesterton
If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own. ~ Goethe
I always try to believe the best of everybody – it saves so much trouble. ~ Rudyard Kipling
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. ~ Thomas Jefferson
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. ~ Bertrand Russell
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. ~ George Bernard Shaw
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. ~ John Lilly
Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~ Lewis Carroll
They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness. ~ Louise Erdrich
There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child. ~ Frank A. Clark
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. ~ Ambrose Bierce
The dust of exploded beliefs may make a fine sunset. ~ Geoffrey Madan
Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. ~ George Carlin
I’m not religious at all. I think faith is something that gives you strength. I believe in fate and I believe that things happen for a reason but I don’t think that there’s a high power, necessarily. I believe in karma very much though. There are so many rude people around and they’re the people that don’t have any real friends. And relationships with people – with your mom, your man, your dog… are what you get the most happiness in life from. Apart from shoes and bags. ~ Amy Winehouse
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force. ~ George Bernard Shaw
I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth. ~ Christopher Hampton
The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. ~ Jules Renard
Just Above Sunset 