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For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.
-Anon.
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In an age of nothing, at a time when we stand at the brink of our own destruction?
Strengthen your belief in yourself, in the future of humanity, in the things of this world that cannot be easily perceived.
Awaken that which lies dormant now within your soul. Re-ignite the flame of your consciousness, and measure the strength of your conviction.
Reveal the lie.
Renounce your hatred.
Seek, find and embrace the truths you are fortunate enough to discover. Cherish them. Use them to anchor you in the sea of chaos that is the world we live in.
When twilight draws near, when you are pushed to the very limits of your soul, When it seems that all you have left are the dead remnants of the fabric of your life?
Believe.
-Anon., Disturbed, Believe liner notes
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yamai wa ki kara
sickness is a thing of the spirit
-Japanese Proverb
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A sign inside the front door of Holy Cross Primary School, in north Belfast, reads: If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.
-Anon., Chris Thornton - Time Magazine
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I believe in the sun even if it isn't shining. I believe in love even when I am alone. I believe in God even when He is silent.
-Anon., (sometimes attributed to a World War II refugee)
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To believe a thing is impossible is to make it so.
-Proverb
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And if we now cast our eyes over the nations of the earth, we shall find that, instead of possessing the pure religion of the Gospel, they may be divided either into infidels, who deny the truth; or politicians who make religion a stalking horse for their ambition; or professors, who walk in the trammels of orthodoxy, and are more attentive to traditions and ordinances of men than to the oracles of truth.
-Samuel Adams
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The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do.
-James Allen
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Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults --a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.
-Henri Frederic Amiel
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It doesn't matter how many say it cannot be done or how many people have tried it before; it's important to realize that whatever you're doing, it's your first attempt at it.
-Wally Amos
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I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.
-Maya Angelou
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If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
-Dr. Robert Anthony
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Light half-believers of our casual creeds, who never deeply felt, nor clearly will d, whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, whose vague resolves never have been fulfilled.
-Matthew Arnold
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Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
-Richard Bach
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Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.
-Walter Bagehot
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I started out by believing God for a newer car than the one I was driving. I started out believing God for a nicer apartment than I had. Then I moved up.
-Jim Bakker
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Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
-James Baldwin
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We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.
-James Baldwin
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Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
-Joel A. Barker
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More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.
-P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum
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Every time a child says, I don't believe in fairies, there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
-James Barrie
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Once you begin to believe there is help out there, you will know it to be true.
-Saint Bartholomew
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The essential element in personal magnetism is a consuming sincerity -- an overwhelming faith in the importance of the work one has to do.
-Bruce Barton
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When you think of the huge uninterrupted success of a book like Don Quixote, you're bound to realize that if humankind have not yet finished being revenged, by sheer laughter, for being let down in their greatest hope, it is because that hope was cherished so long and lay so deep!
-Georges Bernanos
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Everything is possible for him who believes.
-Bible
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Incredulity is the wisdom of the fool.
-Josh Billings
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I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
-Shirley Temple Black
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In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on Earth, there first had to be hundreds of millions of protein molecules of the Ninth Configuration. But, given the size of the planet Earth, do you know how long it would take for just one of these protein molecules to appear by chance? Roughly 10 to the 243rd power, billions of years; and I find that far, far more fantastic than simply believing in a god.
-William Peter Blatty, The Ninth Configuration (movie)
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Colonel Kane: You're convinced that God is dead because there's evil in the world.
Captain Cutshaw: Correct.
Colonel Kane: Then why don't you think He's alive because of the goodness in the world?
-William Peter Blatty, The Ninth Configuration (movie)
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Of course I don't believe in it. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.
-Neils Bohr, When asked why he had a horseshoe on his wall
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Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.
-Ludwig Borne
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The wisest is he that knows only that he knows nothing. God only knows. We mortals are only troubled with morbid little ideas, sired by circumstance and damned by folly. The human head can absorb only the flavorings of its surroundings. We assume that our faith political and our creed religious are founded upon our reason, when they are really made for us by social conditions over which we had little control.
The book is becoming rare but some can still be found on the internet. It was printed and hard bound using private funds. Number of copies unknown. It bears no Library of Congress number. See also, Brann and the Iconoclast University of Texas Press, author Charles Carver, date 1957
-William Cowper Brann, Brann, the Iconoclast - published privately by J.D. Shaw, "http://www.heritech.com/pridger/brann/brann.htm", A tribute to W.C. Brann by a friend after Brann's murder
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Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking and believing. As individuals think and believe, so they are.
-Claude M. Bristol
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Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts, unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, or idlest froth amid the boundless main.
-Emily Bronte
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Believe that you possess a basic goodness, which is the foundation for the greatness you can ultimately achieve.
-Les Brown
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Your level of belief in yourself will inevitably manifest itself in whatever you do.
-Les Brown
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If one age believes too much it is natural that another believes too little.
-George Earle Buckle
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Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
-Buddha
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Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings -- that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
-Buddha
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I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.
-Warren Buffett
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Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
-Samuel Butler
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All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise.
-Lord (George Gordon) Byron
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Men freely believe that which they desire.
-Julius Caesar
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Men willingly believe what they wish.
-Julius Caesar
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What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.
-Julius Caesar
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This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question.
-Orson Scott Card
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We are what we believe we are
-Benjamin N. Cardozo
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You've got to be success minded. You've got to feel that things are coming your way when you're out selling; otherwise, you won't be able to sell anything.
-Curtis Carlson
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Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.
-Thomas Carlyle
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No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.
-Thomas Carlyle
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The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against unbelief.
-Thomas Carlyle
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The most fearful unbelief is unbelief in your self.
-Thomas Carlyle
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Sometimes I've believed as many as six possible things before breakfast.
-Lewis Carroll
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One can't believe impossible things. I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
-Lewis Carroll
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The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said
-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, ch. VII, 1872
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As a first approximation, I define belief not as the object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as the subject's investment in a proposition, the act of saying it and considering it as true.
-Michel De Certeau
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As soon as you begin to believe in something, then you can no longer see anything else. The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
-Pema Ch, The Wisdom of No Escape
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It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
-Jacob Chanowski
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We have only to believe. And the more threatening and irreducible reality appears, the more firmly and desperately we must believe. Then, little by little, we shall see the universal horror unbend, and then smile upon us, and then take us in its more than human arms.
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.
-Lord Chesterfield
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Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day.
-Ching Ning Chu
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He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.
-Charles Caleb Colton
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When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous.
-Calvin Coolidge
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If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.
-Angel Cordero Jr.
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Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.
-Norman Cousins
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Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
-Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
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We believe at once in evil, we only believe in good upon reflection. Is this not sad?
-Madame Dorothe Deluzy
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Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
-Demosthenes
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There may indeed be those who would prefer to deny the existence of a God so powerful, rather than believe that all other things are uncertain. But let us not oppose them for the present, and grant that all that is here said of a God is a fable; nevertheless in whatever way they suppose that I have arrived at the state of being that I have reached -- whether they attribute it to fate or to accident, or make out that it is by a continual succession of antecedents, or by some other method -- since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author to whom they assign my origin the less powerful. To these reasons I have certainly nothing to reply, but at the end I feel constrained to confess that there is nothing in all that I formerly believed to be true, of which I cannot in some measure doubt, and that not merely through want of thought or through levity, but for reasons which are very powerful and maturely considered; so that henceforth I ought not the less carefully to refrain from giving credence to these opinions than to that which is manifestly false, if I desire to arrive at any certainty in the sciences.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/philosophy/descartes/meditations/med1.html
-Rene Descartes, Meditations On First Philosophy in which the Existence of God and the Distinction Between Mind and Body are Demonstrated
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The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.
-Richard M. DeVos
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The abdication of belief makes the behavior small -- better an ignis fatuus than no illume at all.
-Emily Dickinson
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I don't think anything is unrealistic if you believe you can do it.
-Mike Ditka
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You are always a valuable, worthwhile human being -- not because anybody says so, not because you're successful, not because you make a lot of money -- but because you decide to believe it and for no other reason.
-Wayne Dyer
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You'll see it when you believe it.
-Wayne Dyer
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Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.
-Tryon Edwards
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Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.
-George Eliot
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A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.
-Havelock Ellis
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Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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All the great ages have been ages of belief.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
-Epictetus
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Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I've done. But I'm telling you honestly that it doesn't surprise me. I knew I could do it.
-Patrick Ewing
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We are resolved to protect individual freedom of belief. This freedom must include the child as well as the parent. The freedom for which we stand is not freedom of belief as we please,... not freedom to evade responsibility, ...but freedom to be honest in speech and action, freedom to respect one's own integrity of thought and feeling, freedom to question, to investigate, to try, to understand life and the universe in which life abounds, freedom to search anywhere and everywhere to find the meaning of Being, freedom to experiment with new ways of living that seem better than the old.
-Sophia Lyon Fahs, A New Ministry to Children, quoted in Cornerstones, p.7.
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He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.
-Henry Ford
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I am a winner each and every time I go into the ring.
-George Foreman
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There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
-E. M. Forster
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Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
-Sigmund Freud
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It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.
-Max Frisch
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The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.
-James A. Froude
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I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.
-Robert Fulghum, The Storyteller's Creed
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He does not believe that does not live according to his belief .
-Thomas Fuller
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A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.
-Elizabeth Gaskell
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A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.
-Lynwood L. Giacomini
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Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.
-Frank Gifford
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He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.
-Johann von Goethe
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We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
-Johann von Goethe
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If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.
-Johann von Goethe
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Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
-Foka Gomez
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Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early.
-Gunther Grass
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People give us credit only for what we ourselves believe.
-Gutzkow
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I cannot spare the luxury of believing that all things beautiful are what they seem.
-Fitz-Greene Halleck
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Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
-Alexander Hamilton, attributed, also attributed to others with some variations
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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
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The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
-David Hare
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To a very large extent men and women are a product of how they define themselves. As a result of a combination of innate ideas and the intimate influences of the culture and environment we grow up in, we come to have beliefs about the nature of being human. These beliefs penetrate to a very deep level of our psychosomatic systems, our minds and brains, our nervous systems, our endocrine systems, and even our blood and sinews. We act, speak, and think according to these deeply held beliefs and belief systems.
-Jeremy W. Hayward
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Belief gets in the way of learning.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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What ever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
-Napoleon Hill
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Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.
-H. A. Hodges
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Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
-Eric Hoffer
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Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.
-Eric Hoffer
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The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth
-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, pp. 80-81, 1951
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You must see first before you can believe.
-Raymond Holliwell
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A certain portion of the human race has certainly a taste for being diddled.
-Thomas Hood
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Loving is half of believing.
-Victor Hugo
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Belief creates the actual fact.
-William James
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
-William James
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The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
-Gerald G. Jampolsky
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As I get older I seem to believe less and less and yet to believe what I do believe more and more.
-David Jenkins
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Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
-Samuel Johnson
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Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
-Samuel Johnson
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The word 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 Gustav Jung
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A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
-Franz Kafka
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By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
-Nikos Kazantzakis
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It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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When suave politeness, tempering bigot zeal, corrected I believe to One does feel.
-Ronald Knox
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In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.
-Michael Korda
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There seems to be a great misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.
-Louis Kronenberger
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Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.
-Jean De La Fontaine
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No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.
-Ann Landers
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If you don't believe in yourself, then who will believe in you? The next man's way of getting there might not necessarily work for me, so I have to create my own ways of getting there.
-Martin Lawrence
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I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now? Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
-John Lennon
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I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/
-C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry? The Weight of Glory and other Addresses (New York: Harper Collins publishers, 1980), p. 140
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Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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With the majority of people unbelief in one thing is founded on the blind belief in another.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Whatever one believes to be true either is true or becomes true in one's mind.
-John C. Lilly
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In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
-John C. Lilly
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You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
-Abraham Lincoln
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If you think you can do it, you can.
-Eric Lindros
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We are all captives of the picture in our head -- our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.
-Walter Lippmann
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Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
-Walter Lippmann
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Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
-James Russell Lowell
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Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
-Martin Luther
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Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
-Andrew V. Madson
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Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.
-General Peyton C. March
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Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for -- because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.
-Peter Marshall
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It is easier to believe than to doubt.
-Everett D. Martin
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When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.
-Peter McWilliams
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The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
-H. L. Mencken
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It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
-H. L. Mencken
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One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.
-John Stuart Mill
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What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.
-Henry Miller
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To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
-Olin Miller
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I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing -- it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.
-Mary Wortley Montagu
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How many things served us but yesterday as articles of faith, which today we deem but fables?
-Michel de Montaigne
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Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
-Michel de Montaigne
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If you don't have solid beliefs you cannot build a stable life. Beliefs are like the foundation of a building, and they are the foundation to build your life upon.
-Alfred A. Montapert
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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
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What you hear repeatedly you will eventually believe.
-Mike Murdock
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Have you heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, I seek God! I seek God! As many of those who do not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter...
Whither is God, he cried. I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are murderers.... God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him...
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 126, 1882
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A belief, however necessary it may be for the preservation of a species, has nothing to do with truth. The falseness of a judgment is not for us necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species preserving, perhaps even species cultivating. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
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I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life. Les Jeux.
-Anais Nin, The Diary of Ana, 1980
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Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.
-Louis Nizer
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If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics --a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage --surely that proves that you are in the right?
-George Orwell
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We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.
-Ovid
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People are slow to believe that, which if believed would work them harm.
-Ovid
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Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
-Thomas Paine
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Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
-Blaise Pascal
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If we let ourselves believe that man began with divine grace, that he forfeited this by sin, and that he can be redeemed only by divine grace through the crucified Christ, then we shall find peace of mind never granted to philosophers. He who cannot believe is cursed, for he reveals by his unbelief that God has not chosen to give him grace.
-Blaise Pascal
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Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
-Norman Vincent Peale
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First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, I believe, three times.
-Norman Vincent Peale
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I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.
-Ralph B. Perry
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Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half the evil they say of others.
-J. Petit-Senn
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The Gateway to Christianity is not through an intricate labyrinth of dogma, but by a simple belief in the person of Christ.
-William Lyon Phelps
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All beliefs are bald ideas.
-Francis Picabia
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Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.
-Pliny The Elder
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Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.
-Alexander Pope
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Man makes holy what he believes.
-Ernest Renan
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What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.
-Anthony Robbins
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All personal breakthroughs being with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief. You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, but it's costing you in the present and, ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future. Then you must associate tremendous pleasure to the idea of adopting a new, empowering belief.
-Anthony Robbins
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Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
-Anthony Robbins
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If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.
-Anthony Robbins
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To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.
-Sugar Ray Robinson
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There is no argument in the world that carries the hatred that a relioious belief does. The more learned a man is, the less consideration he has for another man's belief.
-Will Rogers
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It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
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The barrier between success is not something which exists in the real world: it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
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We won't even attempt to achieve what we do not believe at a deep level we can have or deserve.
-Ruth Ross
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The nobility of a human being is strictly independent of that of his convictions.
-Jean Rostand
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I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
-Leo Rosten
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Every dogma has its day.
-Abraham Rotstein
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My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.
-Wilma Rudolph
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When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favor of the belief which he finds in himself.
-Bertrand Russell
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What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.
-Bertrand Russell
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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, Unpopular Essays
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What makes a belief true or false I call a fact. The particular fact that makes a given belief true or false I call its objective, and the relation of the belief to its objective I call the reference or the objective reference of the belief. Thus, if I believe that Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492, the objective of my belief is Columbus's actual voyage, and the reference of my belief is the relation between my belief and the voyage--that relation, namely, in virtue of which the voyage makes my belief true (or, in another case, false). Reference of beliefs differs from meaning of words in various ways, but especially in the fact that it is of two kinds, true reference and false reference. The truth or falsehood of a belief does not depend upon anything intrinsic to the belief, but upon the nature of its relation to its objective. The intrinsic nature of belief can be treated without reference to what makes it true or false.
http://www.literaturepage.com/read/russell-analysis-of-mind-165.html
-Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind, Lecture XII. Belief
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If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
-Saint Augustine of Hippo
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Of what worth are convictions that bring not suffering?
-Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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I believe in using words, not fists... I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.
-Susan Sarandon
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Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are not superhuman. Success does not require a super-intellect. Nor is there anything mystical about success. And success doesn't based on luck. Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do. Never -- yes, never -- sell yourself short.
-Dr. David Schwartz
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Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier -- certainly no more difficult -- than small ideas and small plans.
-Dr. David Schwartz
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Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.
-Dr. David Schwartz
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A belief which does not spring from a conviction in the emotions is no belief at all.
-Evelyn Scott
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Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction, the quitting response that follows from the belief that whatever you do doesn't matter.
-Martin Seligan
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Seeing is not always believing.
-Rod Serling
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...although both the Academics and the Pyrrhonian Skeptics say that they believe some things, yet here too the difference between the two philosophies is quite plain. For the word believe has different meanings; it means not to resist but simply to follow without any strong impulse or inclination, as the boy is said to believe his tutor; but sometimes it means to assent to a thing of deliberate choice and with a kind of sympathy due to strong desire, as when the incontinent man believes him who approves of an extravagant mode of life. Since, therefore, Carneades and Cleitomachus declare that a strong inclination accompanies their credence
-Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism
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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. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
-George Bernard Shaw
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I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.
-George Bernard Shaw
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The only disadvantage of an honest heart is credulity.
-Sir Philip Sidney
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To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surmise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more surely.
-Lillian Smith
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I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.
-Gerry Spence
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You can do what you think you can do and you cannot do what you think you cannot
-Ben Stein
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What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand.
-Adlai Stevenson
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The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
-Jonathan Swift
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The most positive men are the most credulous.
-Jonathan Swift
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The prompter the refusal, the less the disappointment.
-Publilius Syrus
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I believe because it is impossible.
-Terence
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You believe easily that which you hope for earnestly.
-Terence
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I've always believed no matter how many shots I miss, I'm going to make the next one.
-Isiah Thomas
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Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.
-Brian Tracy
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And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning
-Anthony Trollope
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Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
-Mark Twain
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The man who appeals to the best side of his fellows is rarely disappointed.
-Source Unknown
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At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
-Source Unknown
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Beware of assumptions! Whatever you assume to be possible -- or impossible will have a tendency to become real for you.
-Source Unknown
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I knew my trainer believed in me and I couldn't let Him down.
-Source Unknown
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If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.
-Source Unknown
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If you do not believe in yourself... chances are nobody else will.
-Source Unknown
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The human mind must believe in something, so why not let it believe what it does believe.
-Source Unknown
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The very act of believing creates strength of its own.
-Source Unknown
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That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
-Paul Ambroise Valery, La Jeune Parque, Le Cimitiere Marin
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My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.
-Jim Valvano
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Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.
-F. D. Van Amburgh
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They can because they think they can.
-Virgil
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What a person believes is not as important as how a person believes.
-Timothy Virkkala
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If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won t, you most assuredly won t. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.
-Denis Waitley
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You must understand that seeing is believing, but also know that believing is seeing.
-Denis Waitley
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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.
-Alan Watts
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Your beliefs are cause maps that you impose on the world, after which you 'see' what you have already imposed.
-Karl Weick
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You can change your beliefs so they empower your dreams and desires. Create a strong belief in yourself and what you want.
-Marcia Wieder
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The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything, and the young know everything.
-Oscar Wilde
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Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
-Robert Wilson
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If you think you're beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don't;
If you'd like to win, but think, you can't
It's almost a cinch you won't.
If you think you will lose, you're lost;
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will,
It's all in the state of mind.
If you think you're outclassed, you are;
You've got to think high to rise.
You've got to hustle before
You can ever win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.
-Walter D. Wintle, The Man Who Thinks He Can
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Books about Belief
