“They don’t believe in liberty. They don’t believe in China before the Communists. There is only one simple, clear task: to protect their control, to maintain their governing. Which is such a pity.”

Source: More Than Human (1953), Chapter 2 “Baby is Three”, p. 94
Context: That’s fairly common. We don’t believe anything we don’t want to believe.

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 3.

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 180

Source: The Chronoliths (2001), Chapter 8 (p. 112)

When asked, "In your estimation, what does the supernatural genre tell us about ourselves as human beings?" in "He Is Legend" interview at <!-- OBSOLETE DEAD LINK --> Cinemaspy (2007); also quoted in [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/24/195317782/author-richard-matheson-i-am-legend-writer-dies-at-87 "Author Richard Matheson, 'I Am Legend' Writer, Dies At 87" at NPR (26 June 2013) http://www.cinemaspy.com/spotlight/interviews/
Context: I think we’re yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you that I don’t believe in the “supernatural,” I believe in the “supernormal.” To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it’s because we haven’t been able to understand it yet.

This quotation actually comes from page 211 of Émile Cammaerts' book The Laughing Prophet : The Seven Virtues and G. K. Chesterton (1937) in which he quotes Chesterton as having Father Brown say, in "The Oracle of the Dog" (1923): "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense." Cammaerts then interposes his own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: "'It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 'And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.'" Note that the remark about believing in anything is outside the quotation marks — it is Cammaerts. The correct attribution was reportedly first traced by Pasquale Accardo. http://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/ It was also credited to Nigel Rees (as cited in First Things, 1997). http://books.google.com/books?id=NuQnAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+first+effect+of+not+believing+in+God+is+to+believe+in+anything%22&dq=%22The+first+effect+of+not+believing+in+God+is+to+believe+in+anything%22&hl=en&ei=PSzcTvewIefx0gHqmrj0DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ
Misattributed

"Why Liberty?”, in the Chicago Tribune (30 January 1927)
1920s
Context: I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

Billy the Kid's comment to a Las Vegas Gazette reporter (December, 1880)
About Billy the Kid website http://www.aboutbillythekid.com/index.html