“Belief creates the actual fact.”
“My belief is, we will, in fact be greeted as liberators.”
Meet The Press with Tim Russert. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/ (March 16, 2003)
2000s, 2003
“All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs.”
Source: Awaken the Giant Within (1992), p. 85
Context: All personal breakthroughs begin 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.
Visions of Politics (2002), "Interpretation, rationality and truth"
Source: 1960s, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory," 1962, p. 108
CBS News program Face the Nation http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/us/43rd-president-vice-president-elect-cheney-says-bush-administration-will-move.html (December 2000)
2000s
Source: What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate (2009), Chapter 1 "The Decision Grid" (p. 19)
“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.”
The earliest published attribution of this quote to Einstein found on Google Books is the 1991 book The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis by Raj Jain (p. 507), but no source to Einstein's original writings is given and the quote itself is older; for example New Guard: Volume 5, Issue 3 from 1961 says on p. 312 http://books.google.com/books?id=5BbZAAAAMAAJ&q=%22fit+the+theory%22#search_anchor "Someone once said that if the facts do not fit the theory, then the facts must be changed", while Product engineering: Volume 29, Issues 9-12 from 1958 gives the slight variant on p. 9 "There is an age-old adage, 'If the facts don't fit the theory, change the theory.' But too often it's easier to keep the theory and change the facts." These quotes are themselves probably variants of an even earlier saying which used the phrasing "so much the worse for the facts", many examples of which can be seen in this search http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=facts+fit+%22so+much+the+worse+for+the+facts%22&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_max:Dec%2031_2%201950&num=10; for example, the 1851 American Whig Review, Volumes 13-14 says on p. 488 http://books.google.com/books?id=910CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA488#v=onepage&q&f=false "However, Mr. Newhall may possibly have been of that casuist's opinion, who, when told that the facts of the matter did not bear out his hypothesis, said 'So much the worse for the facts.'" The German idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte circa 1800 did say "If theory conflicts with the facts, so much the worse for the facts." The Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs in his "Tactics and Ethics" (1923) echoed the same quotation.
Misattributed
