“Belief is not a merely intellectual process, belief is not a mere persuasion of the mind, belief is something that is in our heart, and what you believe, you must do, because belief is from God. It is to the heart that God speaks, it is in the heart that God resides…. Here is a work that you have undertaken, a work so gigantic, so stupendous, the means for which are so poor, the resistance to which will be so strong, so organised … and what means have you with which to carry out this tremendous work of yours? If you look at it intellectually, it is hopeless…. This intellectual process, if it is used honestly, if it is followed to the very end, leads you to despair. It leads you to death.”

— Sri Aurobindo

January 19, 1908
India's Rebirth

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Belief is not a merely intellectual process, belief is not a mere persuasion of the mind, belief is something that is i…" by Sri Aurobindo?

Sri Aurobindo 224

Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, gur… 1872–1950

Related quotes

“It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 8

“Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. It is the belief that God will do what is right.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: He Still Moves Stones

“We believe in the wrong things, that's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“Hope is different from belief. Belief is a function of the mind. It is something which, on the mental level, appears to you to be true, valuable, magnetic, attractive – a set of ideas which together make an ideology in which you can believe. It seems to answer the problems of life, to provide answers to various questions which arise about the meaning, the purpose, of life, and so on. That is a very different thing from hope.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993)

“What does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Large Catechism 1.1-3, F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau, tr.<cite>Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church</cite>(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 565. http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-03.html

“Even if you don't believe in God, you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.”

Michael Crichton book State of Fear

State of Fear (2004)
Context: I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely emerges in another form. Even if you don't believe in God, you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

“Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters that he cannot answer them all. He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God; but that you must remember that different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", page 307 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=325&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-11981 from Emma Darwin (wife) to N.A. Mengden (8 April 1879)
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

“I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely emerges in another form. Even if you don't believe in God, you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.”

Michael Crichton book State of Fear

State of Fear (2004)

“We live of novelty in science. So when you do something new, you have to overcome certain beliefs that it cannot be done, that it's not interesting and so on.”

Heinrich Rohrer (1933–2013) Swiss physicist

Interview http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1986/rohrer-interview.html with Heinrich Rohrer at the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 9 April, 2008. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org http://nobelprize.org/.

“The question to ask believers is this: “Does it really matter whether what you believe about God is true—or don’t you care?” If it does matter, then you must justify your beliefs; if it doesn’t, then you must justify belief itself.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 63

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Sri Aurobindo 224

Related quotes

Related topics