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.

Listen to me: Life is not about principles; it`s about happiness.` `But if you don`t have any principles, and if you don`t have faith, you can`t be happy at all,` said Kadife. `That`s true. But in a brutal country like ours, where human life is cheap, it`s stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.` `Actually, it`s the other way round. In a poor country, people`s sole consolation comes from their beliefs.

An interesting thing about the religious people who run Iran is that one of their problems with Ahmadinejad, who they thought would be one of their guys because he's so religious, is that he actually has some really nutty ideas about religion. He's too religious. He's too literal. I mean, there are plenty of people in Iran who like Ahmadinejad's religious beliefs, just as there are plenty of Christian fundamentalists in America who like George W. Bush's beliefs. But there are also plenty of people who are very uncomfortable with his overt religiosity.

There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.

If the truth conflicts with my beliefs, I change my beliefs.

Remember this: Beliefs divide, values unite. When we go to the values that underlie so many religious beliefs, they unite us.

...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.

Most true believers, when faced with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, will hold on to those beliefs even more strongly.

When I watch that attachment happening, I see the beliefs that I have around it. If somebody's not paying attention to me in a certain way, in my mind, it means they don't love me or they don't respect me. Bringing awareness to the beliefs that are underneath the attachment and bringing awareness to the way my body and heart are tightening, helps me wake up and re-inhabit a larger space of being. Holding on and pushing away might be going on but I'm freer to respond in a healthy way.

Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change

No amount of effort could have stopped that, because our points of view - the way we perceive things - are inextricably linked to our beliefs, ... ,our beliefs color what we see.

The 'secret of life' is BELIEF. Rather than genes, it is our beliefs that control our lives. PSYCH-K is a set of simple, self-empowering techniques to change your beliefs and perceptions that impact your life at a cellular level.

Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual. Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.

Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.

As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs.

There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.

FAQ regarding my book were not about my use of commas or how the images went berserk, but about the political situation in Bosnia, about guilt and shame, about victims and perpetrators, about reasons, arguments and beliefs that led to the conflict in the first place, etc. All of this needed and still needs answering and ongoing discussions, but I mostly felt overwhelmed and unqualified to articulate anything worth more than personal experiences of the siege, of fear and refuge - all the things which I wrote about anyway.

I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit.

It's not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.

I've spent the last few years really trying to come out of that belief system. Speaking mythologically, it's like Beauty and the Beast. The beast kidnaps the beauty until she learns to love him for who he is. In a sense, our negative beliefs kidnap our greatness, our life-force. We have to go and kiss them.

Life knows us not and we do not know life—-we don’t know even our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow

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

They stared at each other, wanting each other, drawn to each other, but their silent shout of love went unheard in the roar of misunderstanding, and the clatter of culturally ingrained beliefs.

I have nothing to lose by standing up and following my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We have been in jail for years.

When people are talking about manifesting, we can say, "I want a car, I want a car, I want a car," but if the mind is running, "I don't deserve it, I'll never be able to afford it, I'll never be a success" - if all those things are running - then those things are what we're really manifesting. They are exactly what's running our life. And as long as we believe those thoughts, thinking positively is not strong enough to override our negative beliefs.

There is no difference between religion and politics. Both involve lies and fanatical beliefs that generaly defy logic... Just like rock climbing.

Satire works in a bunch of specific ways, like a very precisely-geared bomb. It's a bit like something that looks harmless, and you swallow it, but once it's inside you it's too late, and it triggers, blowing up. And it's your specific inner beliefs and faulty arguments that trigger a satire bomb. If your arguments work, the bomb doesn't trigger, it doesn't need to.

Are science and religion converging? No. There are modern scientists whose words sound religious but whose beliefs, on close examination, turn out to be identical to those of other scientists who straightforwardly call themselves atheists.

Integrity is a life where your beliefs and intentions are aligned with your words and actions.

Trust that The Uni-verse knows your bills, knows you need to eat and knows your heart much better than even you do, so keep facing your fears and limiting beliefs daily.

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.

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.

Stories are our attempts to share our values & beliefs with the hopes that we may attract those who believe what we believe. This is the basis of forming a trusting relationship. Story telling, therefor, is only worthwhile when it tells what you stand for, not what you do.

The right to criticize: the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood... Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own.

Many people do not distinguish between something that happens to them and their reaction to it. Yet it isn't the event or situation that holds the emotional charge; it's our beliefs that create our response.

The whole intelectual culture has a filtering system, starts as a child in school. You're expected to accept certain beliefs, styles, behavioral patterns and so on. If you don't accept them, you are called maybe a behavioral problem, or something, and you're weeded out. Something like that goes on all the way through universities and graduate schools. There is an implicit system of filtering, which has the, it creates a strong tendency to impose conformism. Now, it's a tendency, so you do have exceptions, and sometimes the exceptions are quite striking.

People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.

Positive secularism is not tolerance of all religions, but it is the total denial of religious beliefs: it is the emergence of homogeneous human outlook which is based upon verifiable facts of life.

What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were framed upon.

Culture is the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that operate unconsciously and define in a basic 'taken for granted' fashion an organization's view of its self and its environment.

I'm very proud that I was a Goldwater Girl. And then my political beliefs changed over time.

Whatever my current beliefs are, on any topic, they're all open to being changed by the right facts and the right evidence.

Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.

Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.

Defend your beliefs with courtesy and with compassion, but defend them.

I like talking to priests, to Catholics. Everyone has their beliefs.

What we hold sacred is honor, justice, and glory. You need not swear allegiance to our storm god, to serve with us. Fighters are among us from many lands, with many gods and many beliefs. Believe as you will. What is between a man and his god is theirs alone to say.

We cannot preserve philanthropic and charitable values if we detach them completely from our fundamental personal beliefs and convictions.