Quotes About Beliefs

The brain is a stubborn organ. Once its primary set of beliefs has been established, the brain finds it difficult to integrate opposing ideas and beliefs. This has profound consequences for individuals and society and helps to explain why some people cannot abandon destructive beliefs, be they religious, political or psychological.

Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn't mean that beliefs or ideas or thinking is a problem; the stubborn attitude of having to have things be a particular way, grasping on to our beliefs and thoughts, all these cause the problems. To put it simply, using your belief system this way creates a situation in which you choose to be blind instead of being able to see, to be deaf instead of being able to hear, to be dead rather than alive, asleep rather than awake.

I think there's a lot of great beliefs in the Buddhist religion, I think there's a lot of great beliefs in the Christian religion, I think there's a lot of great beliefs in no religion. It just depends on how you feel on the inside.

Become aware of your beliefs and automatic default settings. Bring them into the light of your present, adult knowledge. Gently acknowledge that they are what they are. Then accept that they constitute what you've believed until now, and that you can transform them into beliefs that allow you to fully express who you really are. Without judgment, patiently begin working to change subconscious and limiting beliefs into true expressions of your authentic self.

An extremely important part of our work toward emotional growth and change will come from examining our belief systems regarding all areas of life. To gain the courage to be yourself, you need to address the beliefs that are keeping you stuck where you are. What beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes are you holding onto even though they no longer enhance your life? It is possible to free yourself from worn-out beliefs and acquire ones that bring happiness, strength, and self-esteem. What we believe we may become.

Common sense dictates that we evaluate our beliefs on the basis of how they affect us. If they make us more loving, creative, and wise, they are good beliefs. If they make us cruel, jealous, depressed and sick, they cannot be good beliefs.

Either philosophy reinforces communal beliefs, in which case it is pointless; or else it is at odds with those beliefs, in which case it is dangerous.

We can be confident that action which is in accord with a few basic beliefs cannot be wrong and can at least testify to the values we will need to cultivate. These are the beliefs that the human race is a family that has inherited a place on the earth in common, that its members have an obligation to work toward sharing it so that none is deprived of the elementary needs for life, and that all have a responsibility to leave it undegraded for those who follow.

Deep religious beliefs stemming from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible inspired many of the early settlers of our country, providing them with the strength, character, convictions, and faith necessary to withstand great hardship and danger in this new and rugged land. These shared beliefs helped forge a sense of common purpose among the widely dispersed colonies - a sense of community which laid the foundation for the spirit of nationhood that was to develop in later decades.

We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment -- and that is not easy ... but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue.

To enlighten people by reminding them the irrationality of their beliefs is an act more honest and more important than the act of praising and respecting people's beliefs!

Until you understand your Core Story, whatever it is, and how it made you who you are today, your foundation will reflect only your unconscious beliefs about yourself, real or imagined, positive or negative. When you delve into your subconscious beliefs about your lot in life, whether you believe you deserve to be happy or sad, successful or unsuccessful, only then do you have the chance to change the story that is replaying over and over in your head and determining how you go through life.

Your beliefs about reality become your beliefs about yourself.

My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand... I think she's right. I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry them out of my hands. (p.17-18)

Externalists reject any such view. I think that the idea that we can tell, simply by way of reflection, whether our beliefs are justified, is deeply commonsensical. More than that, the idea that responsible epistemic agents ought to reflect on their beliefs, and hold them only if they somehow pass muster, is utterly natural.

...as I reject the old time beliefs, it is not a matter of countering belief with belief, rather I can challenge the efficacy of old beliefs with sound arguments. We believe in nature and that human progress depends on the domination of man over nature. There is no conscious power behind it. This is our philosophy.

The beliefs of your country mostly become your own beliefs! Not the reason but the empty tales shape you!

Sometimes all it takes to change a life is to decide which beliefs do not serve you and to literally change your mind about those beliefs.

I absolutely believe that people should show respect to everybody, regardless of their lifestyle, regardless of their beliefs, religious beliefs or any other kind of belief.

Tolerance is a good cornerstone on which to build human relationships. When one views the slaughter and suffering caused by religious intolerance throughout all the history of man and into modern times, one can see that intolerance is a very nonsurvival activity. Religious tolerance does not mean one cannot express his own beliefs. It does mean that seeking to undermine or attack the religious faith and beliefs of another has always been a short road to trouble .

Authenticity is an alignment between your beliefs, your desires and your choices in the world. Desires that are in alignment with core beliefs generate powerful actions. Like a wave that draws from the depths of the ocean, actions connected to your authentic self are more likely to manifest your intentions.

If you discuss the beliefs of Christianity with the village diviner, the medicine man, he will say the white man must be extremely stupid. The white man must be profoundly troubled - probably torn by a huge guilt connected to how he treated the ancestors - to think that villagers would buy the idea that someone died on the cross for us. They would say these beliefs are evidence that the white people killed someone of great importance, probably a diviner and a healer. If you kill a healer, you must make amends by appeasing the healer's spirit.

Before you disagree make sure you understand. In other words, we must make sure that we can describe another's theological position as he would describe it before we criticize or condemn. Another guiding principle should be 'Do not impute to others beliefs you regard as logically entailed by their beliefs but that they explicitly deny'.

The appeal of science fiction has always been its iconoclasm . . . But in order to be an iconoclast, an author must be more than merely aware of the idol he wishes to destroy. He must be intimate with it and understand it in all its aspects. This means that he must have devoted serious thought to it, and have beliefs of his own which will stand up in the place of the broken idol. In other words, any child can complain, but it takes an adult to clash with accepted beliefs . . . an adult with ideas.

The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

In place of the old beliefs of a civilization based on godliness, judgment and historical loyalty, young people are given the new beliefs of a society based on equality and inclusion, and are told that the judgment of other lifestyles is a crime. ... The "non-judgmental" attitude towards other cultures goes hand-in-hand with a fierce denunciation of the culture that might have been one's own

There is no reason to not trust your process, no reason to get frustrated, no reason to criticize, or judge others, nothing wrong with getting old, or not being able to get pregnant, or being handicapped, or being short or tall or gay, or injured, or divorced or married to an idiot, or with Christianity or Judaism or Islam, or indigenous beliefs, or pollution, crime, war, Bush, etc. When this understanding grows, we realize where we're at now is just as perfect as wherever we could possibly get to.

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.

We need to teach our children how to debate the major life issues. Debate strengthens their beliefs and enables them to defend themselves against ideologies that are going to come their way.

People have the absolute right to preach and to think and to say whatever they believe, and at the same time those beliefs can't be used as the basis for denying other people their equal rights and their equal freedom.

It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.

Let no one rule your mind or body. Take special care that your thoughts remain unfettered... Give men your ear, but not your heart. Show respect for those in power, but don't follow them blindly. Judge with logic and reason, but comment not. Consider none your superior in life. Treat all fairly or they will seek revenge. Be careful with your money. Hold fast to your beliefs and others will listen.

Still, it formed one of my basic beliefs about success which is this: most of the time, success can be measured in terms of how much more than others you have of something that's in short supply. This includes money, reputation, respect, etc.

I also feel stronger than I ever have. I have confidence in my beliefs, my decisions and myself.

Healing... is an active and internal process that includes investigating one's attitudes, memories and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one's full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one's external circumstances in an effort to recreate one's life in a way that serves activation of will - the will to see and accept truths about one's life and how one has used one's energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health.

Sometimes people have sympathized with me because long years of my life were spent in jail and in exile. Well, those years ... were a mixed experience. I hated them because they separated me from the dearest thing in the world-the struggle of my people for rebirth. At the same time, they were a blessing because I had what is so rare in this world-the opportunity of thinking about basic issues, the opportunity of examining afresh the beliefs I held.

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

That's important when you are running an organization so that the people who work with you know what you believe in and know those beliefs won't change.

I will not close my eyes, neither those in my head nor those in my soul, as the ship carries me away, along with my future, my dreams, and my beliefs. Buru Island is no happy land somewhere; it's but a way station on my journey in life—though to believe even that much will require no small measure of hope.

For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs.

Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.

The difficulty with humanity's previous attempts at reinventing itself is that we've always started with behaviors rather than with beliefs.

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.

The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past.

We falsely interpret the world around us. We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know.

Arguments hardly affect the faithful- their beliefs have an entirely different foundation.