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Quotations about beliefs

Friedrich NietzscheI cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

Tags:   beliefs  God  

BuddhaBelieve nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

 - Gautama Buddha

Tags:   authority  beliefs  common sense  reasoning  

Mahatma GandhiMen often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.

 - Mahatma Gandhi

Tags:   ability  beliefs  capability  

BuddhaDo 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.

 - Gautama Buddha

Tags:   beliefs  skepticism  

Blaise PascalPeople almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

 - Blaise Pascal

Tags:   beliefs  persuasion  

Richard FeynmanLooking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

 - Richard Feynman

Tags:   beliefs  dogmatism  history  

Thomas PaineAll national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But 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

Tags:   beliefs  church  power  profit  

Robert HeinleinI don't "believe" in anything. I know certain things - little things, not the nine billion names of God - from experience. But I have no beliefs. Belief gets in the way of learning.

 - Robert A. Heinlein

Tags:   atheism  beliefs  learning  

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened.

 - James Harvey Robinson

Tags:   beliefs  opinion  self-esteem  

George Bernard ShawThere is no harder scientific fact in the world than the fact that belief can be produced in practically unlimited quantity and intensity, without observation or reasoning, and even in defiance of both, by the simple desire to believe founded on a strong interest in believing.

 - George Bernard Shaw

Tags:   beliefs  observation  reasoning