“Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.”

— Terry Pratchett

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more." by Terry Pratchett?

Terry Pratchett 796

English author 1948–2015

Related quotes

“In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 375
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Em qualquer espírito, que não seja disforme, existe a crença em Deus. Em qualquer espírito, que não seja disforme, não existe crença em um Deus definido.

Michael E. Gerber (1936) American business writer

Source: The E-Myth Revisited, 1995, p. 5

“What's right isn't always popular, and whats popular isn't always right.”

Sharon M. Draper (1948) American children's writer

“Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up,
Isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"”

A.A. Milne book When We Were Very Young

When We Were Very Young (1924)

“When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

“I call myself a non-theist as opposed to an atheist because as I see an atheist as having a belief about God, i.e. that there isn't one.”

Ursula Goodenough (1943) American biologist

Meaning of Life interview (2008)
Context: Well, God answers of course come in every flavor imaginable these days so God can be process-God can be mind-God … so there are all of these ways that God is now configured as well as the ones that come to us from traditional religions where God has much more power — then there's the whole personal God part which I do talk about in there at some point. So I don't think that even that there is a God framework out there at this point that I am either accepting or rejecting. My response is that I call myself a non-theist as opposed to an atheist because as I see an atheist as having a belief about God, i. e. that there isn't one. And my I've never been actually very interested in the question I guess is one way to put it. I see it as a question That can be summarized in the aphorism "Why is there anything at all rather than nothing." And science doesn't have any answer to That so what I articulated in the book and continued to do is what I call a covenant with mystery where mystery is itself a … noun but I am using it as literally in absence of category. It's not like I have a mystery then I put attributions onto it it just … I don't know the answers.