“As humans, we tend to believe what we think is true, even though what we believe is not necessarily true. It's difficult for us to escape the spark of subjectivity.”

— Titon Rahmawan

Last update Aug. 23, 2023. History

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“The nature of man is such that he tends to believe what he wants to believe. Whether it is true or not usually provides only a brief hesitation. Men believe on the basis of their likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, much of what we believe to be true may be partially true. Absolute truth or absolute falsehood is rare. A total falsehood is easier to detect than a partial falsehood. Even a total truth is totally true only in context.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Source: A Way to Be Free: The Autobiography of Robert LeFevre, Volume I, (1999), p. 19

“We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

“The more we are committed to believing that something is true, the less likely we are to believe that its opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong.”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Source: What Got You Here Won't Get You There, 2008, p. 24 (in 2010 edition)

“If it were so, as conceited sagacity, proud of not being deceived, thinks, that we should believe nothing that we cannot see with our physical eyes, then we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love. … We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. … Which deception is more dangerous?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Works of Love (1847), p. 5

“What we believe is heavily influenced by what we think others believe”

Thomas Gilovich (1954) American psychologist

Source: How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life

“To get at the meaning of a statement the logical positivist asks, "What would the world be like if it were true?" The operationist asks, "What would we have to do to come to believe it?" For the pragmatist the question is, "What would we do if did believe it?"”

Abraham Kaplan (1918–1993) American philosopher

Source: "The Conduct of Inquiry", p. 43.

“Our age is in many ways unique, full of events and phenomena that never occurred before and can never happen again. They distort our thinking, making us believe that what is true now will be true forever, though perhaps on a larger scale. Because we have annihilated distance on this planet, we imagine that we can do it once again. The facts are otherwise, and we see them more clearly if we forget the present and turn our minds towards the past.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

1960s, We'll Never Conquer Space (1960)

“The death of a fighter is not a reason to mourn, if we believe, as we have always believed, as our people have believed and as revolutionaries of every era have believed, that no true man, no true revolutionary dies in vain.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech (12 January 1968) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1968/esp/f120168e.html

“We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“I believe in this country. I believe in the American people. I believe that people are more good than bad. I believe tragic things happen. I think there’s evil in the world, but I think at the end of the day, if we work hard and if we’re true to those things in us that feel true and feel right, that the world gets a little better each time. That’s what this presidency has tried to be about.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

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