Quotes about belief
page 16

“There are dangers in the increasing belief that toleration can simply be imposed on people by a variety of new laws and by a bureaucracy specializing in ethnic affairs, cultural relations and human rights. Unfortunately, the laws and regulatory bodies, introduced in the hope of promoting toleration, can be invoked to attack freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and those principles on which minority rights must, in the last resort, depend. A sensible humane immigration policy is more likely than most of these new agencies and laws - present or proposed - to maintain and foster racial toleration.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

People, Law, Hope, Freedom

“I have always held the belief that Fijians must be integrated into the mainstream of national life. You can't keep them isolated from the other communities and from the mainstream of life and expect them to progress.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Interview with Fiji Live, 22 August 2005

Life, Communication

“Among the many prejudices against vegans is the belief that they are always preaching to others and trying to convert them. I do not think that is true; we are incredibly tolerant. We are always polite when others ask, “Don’t you ever get tempted by a bacon sandwich?”… In fact, most vegans I know are rather coy about explaining why they are vegan, mostly because the question tends to be asked when we are sitting a dinner table full of meat eaters, and it seems rather impolite to answer. However, seeing as we are not at a dinner party now, here is the ethical case… If people are vegetarians for ethical reasons—because they believe that killing and eating animals is wrong—they really ought to be vegan, too. The average human eats more than 11,000 animals in his or her lifetime, but millions of calves and chicks are also killed every year as “waste products” of milk and egg production.”

Kerry McCarthy (1965) British politician

Debate on World Vegan Day http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm111101/debtext/111101-0004.htm#1111025000002 (transcript in www.parliament.uk), House of Commons, 1 November 2011

People, Question, Thinking, Animals

“The Vedic tradition advises people to be busy with themselves, that is, their own moral and spiritual improvement. Several disciplines have been evolved for this purpose tapas (austerity), yoga (meditation), jñAna (reflection), bhakti (devotion), etc. A seeker can take to (adhikAra) whichever discipline suits his adhAra (stage of moral-spiritual preparation). There is no uniform prescription for everybody, no coercion or allurement into a belief system, and no regimentation for aggression against others. The Biblical tradition, on the other hand, teaches people to be busy with others. One is supposed to have become a superior human being as soon as one confesses the ‘only true faith’. Thenceforward one stands qualified to ‘save’ others.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report (1998)

People, Faith, Business

“The Mussolini of 1944 reasserted the socialist beliefs of his youth because he now felt that he had been cheated by the world of finance and industry: after having gained immensely from fascism,… To maintain some intellectual coherence he tried to pretend that, notwithstanding appearances, he had never deserted the socialist programme he had put forward for fascism in 1919; he had allowed certain tactical deviations in the interim, but for the most part, his basic views had never changed. In anonymous articles he now confirmed that he had been right when, in 1910, he called on the proletariat to capture power from the capitalists by a bloody revolution... He now decreed that all industrial firms employing more than 100 workers would be nationalized.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 311-312

Youth, World, Appearance, Change

“The United States was founded on the belief that all men are created equal. Every Election Day, millions of Americans of all races, religions, and backgrounds step into voting booths throughout the Nation. Whether they are rich or poor, old or young, each of them has an equal share in choosing the path that our country will take. And every ballot they cast is a reminder that our founding principles are alive and well.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

radio address https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/11/20081101.html (1 November 2008) 2000s, 2008

Men, Religion, Country

“Feeble beliefs must be replaced by healthier habits and irrelevant institutions by progressive institutions. Our will should get guidance not form the twilight of the intellect but from the broad daylight of true beliefs.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Philosophy of Education, p. 83.

“It seems that religion only knows how to react violently, out of vengeance. Again this is because it’s a belief system rooted in dichotomy and bigotry, with little or no desire to consider extenuating circumstances and NO ability to question itself objectively.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, How is secular humanist governance better than theocracy? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/09/07/how-is-secular-humanist-governance-better-than-theocracy/ (September 7, 2013)

Religion, Question

“In 1993 Osama bin Laden began speaking in detail to Muslim and Western journalists about his beliefs, goals, and intentions, and began publishing commentaries on these matters in the media…. While bin Laden's words have not been a torrent, they are plentiful, carefully chosen, plainly spoken, and precise. He has set out the Muslim world's problems as he sees them; determined that they are caused by the Unites States; explained why they must be remedied; and outlined how he will try to do so. Seldom in America's history has an enemy laid out so clearly the basis for the war he is waging against it.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (pp. 45-6).
2000s

War, World, History, Problem

“At the religious discussion meetings held by Akbar, 'at which every one… might say or ask what he liked,' the emperor examined people about the creation of the Quran, elicited their belief, or otherwise, in revelation, and raised doubts in them regarding all things connected with the Prophet and the imams. He distinctly denied the existence of Jins, of angels, and of all other beings of the invisible world, as well as the miracles of the Prophet.”

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh by Abdul Qadir Badaoni, vol. II, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

People, World, Angels

“Truth is slippery, not because it is difficult to grasp, but because we prefer our preconceptions, our beliefs, our myths.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 38 (p. 355)

Truth

“Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and in personal originality. But if you asked me to prove what I believe, I couldn't. You can spend your whole life trying to prove what you believe; you may hunt for reasons, but it will all be in vain. Yet our beliefs are like our existence; they are facts. If you don't yet know what to believe in, then try to learn what you feel and desire.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap." Unsourced variant: "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you do not know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way." The earliest published version of this variant appears to be The Human Side of Scientists by Ralph Edward Oesper (1975), p. 58 http://books.google.com/books?id=-J0cAQAAIAAJ&q=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&dq=%22solution+comes+to+you+and+you+do+not+know%22&hl=en, but no source is provided, and the similarity to the "Life Magazine" quote above suggests it's likely a misquote. Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 136

Life, Feeling, Learning, Personality

“Every day a sharp tool, a powerful destroyer, is necessary to cut away dullness, lobotomy, buzzing, belief in human beings, stagnancy, images, and accumulation. As soon as we stop believing in human beings, rather know we are dogs and trees, we'll start to be happy.”

Kathy Acker book Blood and Guts in High School

Blood and Guts in High School (1978)

Happiness, Dogs, Tree

“Science has long been in the value business. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; rather, scientific validity is the result of scientists making their best efforts to value principles of reasoning that link their beliefs to reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument. This is how norms of rational thought are made effective… The answer to the question "What should I believe, and why should I believe it?"”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

is generally a scientific one.
Source: 2010s, The Moral Landscape (2010), p. 143–144

Question, Business, Reality, Effort

“Better understanding of the Asian mind ‑ Indian and Chinese ‑ had one further consequence which needs emphasis. It had been almost a dogma of European thought that everything of value arose in the regions that touched the Aegean Sea. Religion, philosophy, art and even science, it was claimed, originated in this area. In fact, for all civilization a Greek origin was postulated. A persistence in this belief was responsible in the early years of Oriental research for the futile attempts made to date events in Asia, especially Indian history, to periods where they could be conveniently adjusted to developments in Greece. That belief in a monopoly of wisdom for the Greeks had to be reluctantly abandoned, as a result of increased knowledge of Asian civilizations. The liberalization of the Furopean mind consequent upon the recognition of the fact that all nations have contributed towards the growth of human civilization, is a gain of considerable significance.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Wisdom, Religion, Art, History

“Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Fooled by Randomness

Fooled by Randomness (2001)

Motivation

“Indeed, most of what is in history books is stark, raving mad —the maddest of all being the historian's belief that it is sane. For some time now, I often cry when I watch the evening news, read newspapers, or study history books, a reaction I was trained to suppress in every school I attended for 25 years. In fact, it is because we so often switch into our social alters when we try to study history that we cannot understand it —our real emotions are dissociated. Those who are able to remain outside the social trance are the individuals whose personal insights are beyond those of their neighbors.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 5, pp. 108-109.

Books, School, History, Understanding

“The characteristic paranoias of youth — the attribution of intention and duplicity to almost all human behavior. The young suffer terribly from the belief that the people they encounter are most of them up to something and that something has some relation to themselves. Actually, of course, most people just bobble along like apples in a stream. Usually it takes many years of experience to realize this.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Charles Dickens: The Pickwick Papers (p. 102)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

People, Youth, Behavior, Suffering

“A large percentage of bright young men and women locate the impetus behind their career choice in the belief that they are fundamentally different from the common run of man, unique and in certain crucial ways superior, more as it were central, meaningful—what else could explain the fact that they themselves have been at the exact center of all they've experienced for the whole 20 years of their conscious lives?—and that they can and will make a difference in their chosen field simply by the fact of their unique and central presence to it…”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

"Mister Squishy", Oblivion: Stories
Short stories

Women, Men, Way

“The Christians wrested the Old Testament out of the hands of the Jews and used it as a weapon against them. The belief in their own selection by God was turned into an expression of the absolute and exclusive position of Christianity, and Jewish Messianism was twisted into the doctrine of Christ's return.”

Karlheinz Deschner book Abermals krähte der Hahn

Die Christen entwendeten den Juden das Alte Testament und gebrauchten es als Waffe gegen sie. […] Dabei münzte man den Glauben von der Auserwähltheit Israels zum Absolutheitsanspruch des Christentums und den jüdischen Messianismus zur Lehre von der Wiederkunft Christi um.
Abermals krähte der Hahn, btb-Taschenbücher im Goldmann Verlag 1996, ISBN 3-442-72025-7, S. 505

God, Christ

“Currency competition and free banking might increase the efficiency of the financial system, and bring some small triangle welfare gains. But the key question is whether their adoption would improve macroeconomic performance. Even though Salin argues (p. 281) that ‘the best system is that which produces the least inflation’, fluctuations in output are also expensive.
Hayek states that the adoption of his proposal would end recessions. There is absolutely no reason to believe that. Nineteenth century history is evidence that free banking and currency issue, in the wrong legal and regulatory framework, can produce rather than reduce instability. The proponents of free banking and currency issue in this volume do not go much beyond a general belief in competition in justifying their views; they have certainly not explored the necessary legal and regulatory environment in any detail.”

Stanley Fischer (1943) American economist

Stanley Fischer, "Friedman versus Hayek on Private Money: Review Essay" (1986)

History, Question

“In Chaos Magic, beliefs are not seen as ends in themselves, but as tools for creating desired effects. To fully realize this is to face a terrible freedom in which nothing is true and everything is permitted, which is to say that everything is possible, there are no certainties, and the consequences can be ghastly.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: Liber Kaos (1992), p. 75

Freedom

“The number one rule of today's marketing – the key secret of those who seek to control your beliefs and habits in order to take your money, your votes, your time or whatever else it is they desire from you – is to always keep in mind that nobody really believes they can be manipulated.”

Brian Vaszily (1970)

"The One Real Reason You Are Stressed Out, Overweight, Depressed or Angry" http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/06/04/05/the_one_real_reason_you_are_stressed_out_overweight_depressed_or_angry.htm, SixWise.com, undated (accessed 2006-06-23)

Money, Secret, Time

“It takes more than an invading army or crusaders or a demolition squad with sledge-hammers to establish the domain of Truth… Similarly, it is not that easy to get over ‘falsehood’… True spiritual demolition involves the demolition of desire-gods and ego-gods, the demolition of the false gods that reside in conceited theologies, in pretentious revelations and fond belief…”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Understanding Islam Through Hadis, Voice of India, Second Reprint, 1987, Pp. 115-16.
Understanding Islam Through Hadis (1983)

God, Truth, Falseness

“While we might always have enjoyed self-expression, we have perhaps at times lacked a little bit of self-belief.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Broadcasting Speech (August 8, 2007)

Time

“We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

Yukio Mishima on Hagakure : The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan (1977) as translated by Kathryn Sparling, p. 105; Mishima's commentary on the sayings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo.

Life, Death, Flowers, Suffering

“He [Abbé Cénabre] had often reflected on the plight of even the most illustrious of those renegades who finish up engaged in a monotonous argument they can never quite extricate themselves from and seem to be insulting the God they have offended, dragging Him along with them like a fellow criminal shackled to them…. He thought, not without some justification, that where such tortured and anxious nihilists had made their greatest mistake was in having freed only their intellects, leaving belief to go on surviving and festering in the most hidden and least accessible parts of their sensibility. Such a deep and hidden contradiction is all the more destructive because they cannot form a clear idea of it, or indeed express it, except in terms of stammering, repeated, pointless, and childish expressions of hatred. They no longer have any part in a faith that still holds them in abject and slavering thrall. It matters little that they think they have destroyed it.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: L'imposture (The Impostor), 1927, pp.171–172

God, Faith, Idea, Thinking

“People have expected less of movies and have been willing to settle for less. Some have even been willing to settle for Kramer vs. Kramer and other pictures that seem to be made for an audience of over-age flower children. These pictures express the belief that if a man cares about anything besides being at home with the kids, he’s corrupt. Parenting ennobles Dustin Hoffman and makes him a better person in every way, while in The Seduction of Joe Tynan we can see that Alan Alda is a weak, corruptible fellow because he wants to be President of the United States more than he wants to stay at home communing with his daughter about her adolescent miseries. Pictures like these should all end with the fathers and the children sitting at home watching TV together.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Taking It All In (1983), Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers (1980-06-23)

Children, People, Age, Way

“You can believe whatever you like. As long as you admit that it is a belief, you don’t have to defend it. But if you assert your belief as a statement of fact, then you do have to defend it! Stating anything as definitely true when there is insufficient evidence to back it –is dishonest. Making such positive proclamations without any evidence at all is a matter of faith. And promising in advance to forever defend an unsupportable a priori preference even against an avalanche of evidence against it -is apologetics, which is all creation “science” really is.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"12th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc Youtube (April 19, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Faith, Science

“Winning doesn't necessarily mean you're right. History will be a better judge of that. But that's the beauty of democracy — you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and as long as we're not hurting each other, that's fine. Placing a value judgement on a person's beliefs has no place in a democracy.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

"Chiz the whiz takes aim at the Upper House",The Philippine Daily Inquirer, 29 May 2005, p. Q1.
2005

Beauty, Democracy, History, Hurt

“Ibn 'Umar reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, passed by one of the men of the Ansar who was admonishing his brother for being too modest. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Let him be. Modesty is part of belief."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 681
Sunni Hadith

Men, Peace, Parting

“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

God, Question

“It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves- socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. xii

Future, Help, Christ

“Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief. I regard the present conservation movement as the embryo of such an affirmation.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 203.

“All money is a matter of belief.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

https://www.amazon.com/All-money-matter-belief-quotes/dp/B01M0HLG6B
Attributed

Money

“The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. 1: Introductory

World, Freedom

“The Justice Department's conclusion that Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 does not prohibit discrimination based on actual or perceived capacity to transmit AIDS to others has been assailed as legally or medically flawed, mean-spirited, and antagonistic toward the gay community. The criticisms are misplaced. The Department's sober examination of the Rehabilitation Act reveals a commendable dedication to the rule of law and the belief that Congress, not bureaucrats, should be the foremost architect of national public policy. … The gay community and other political minorities, as the foremost beneficiaries of the rule of law, should applaud, not condemn, the Department's opinion. By refusing to usurp policy making power from Congress, the Justice Department acted in the highest tradition of executive restraint.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

AIDS in the workplace; the administration's impeccable logic http://www.nytimes.com/1986/07/13/business/aids-in-the-workplace-the-administration-s-impeccable-logic.html, The New York Times (July 13, 1986)

Justice, Law, Communication

““We do not have a belief, in my way of looking at religion, that says we have to discriminate against anybody,” he said, noting that Jesus Christ reached out to the social outcasts of his time. “If you were to apply those standards to the teaching of Jesus, I don’t think they fit."
A passage in the Gospel of John about Jesus’ outreach makes the point, he said, “that we have a belief in forgiveness and that we do not have to discriminate unduly against anyone on the basis of our own religious beliefs.””

Nathan Deal (1942) American politician

reported by Trudy Ring, "Georgia Governor: 'License to Discriminate' Bill Isn't Christian," The Advocate, March 3, 2016 http://www.advocate.com/politics/2016/3/03/georgia-governor-license-discriminate-bill-isnt-christian?team=social

Religion, Way, Forgiveness, Thinking

“We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.”

Robert Sheckley book Journey Beyond Tomorrow

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 6 “Joenes and the Three Truck Drivers” (p. 50)

Men, War, Religion, Way

“[The consequences of] beliefs that go against the providence of a perfectly good, wise, and just God, or against that immortality of souls which lays them open to the operations of justice…. I even find that somewhat similar opinions, by stealing gradually into the minds of men of high station who rule the rest and on whom affairs depend, and by slithering into fashionable books, are inclining everything toward the universal revolution with which Europe is threatened, and are completing the destruction of what still remains in the world of the generous Greeks and Romans who placed love of country and of the public good, and the welfare of future generations before fortune and even before life.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain (1704)

Love, Life, Men, God

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

On his approach to science popularization
An Exclusive Interview with Prof. Jayant Vishnu Narlikar

Science, Personality

“The term knowledge raises philosophical eyebrows (strictly speaking, it should be called belief).”

Zenon Pylyshyn (1937) Canadian philosopher

Source: Computation and cognition, 1984, p. 130

Knowledge

“I believe in good. It is an ephemeral and elusive quality. It is the center of my beliefs, but it cannot be strengthened by talking about it.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

As quoted in The Martians of Science : Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (2006) by István Hargittai, p. 251

“In any proposed external communication from God, the channels of human faculty are never to be got rid of; so, if they do not in their own native quality constitute divine vouchers, they must operate as barriers to any communication with God. Of God, who is essentially supersensible, there can be no such thing as a presentation directly to our senses; and all belief that sensible facts mean his real presence must rest at last on inferential judgments of our reason, while these will be nothing but self-continuing circles, worthless for evidence, unless our reason is granted to have in itself the real revelation of what accords with the Divine mind. An absolutely direct utterance of God in the external world, evident strictly in itself, is thus upon close examination unintelligible and unthinkable. Yet this is what is implied in a consistent doctrine of Authority.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Right Relation of Reason to Religion, p.240-1

God, World, Communication, Sense

“If Christ can—and he does—hold in utter loyalty the hearts of St. Francis and John Knox, of Calvin and St. Theresa, of General Booth and Pope John, of Billy Graham and Albert Schweitzer, who hold irreconcilably different beliefs about him, how can belief and uniformity of belief be vitally important? Further, where in the Gospels are we ever told that Christ demanded belief in some theological proposition before he would admit a seeker into discipleship?”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.29

Heart, Christ, Loyalty

“Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)

People

“The elevation of the belief in being white was not achieved through wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land; through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me

Source: Between the World and Me (2015), p. 8.

Life, Children, Family, Wine

“Luis Miguel had the pride of the devil and a feeling of absolute superiority that was justified in many things. He had said so long that he was the best that he really believed it. He had to believe it to go on. It was not just something he believed. It was his belief.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Luis Miguel Dominguin was another famous bullfighter and friend of Hemingway's.
Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 10

Feeling

““HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?”
That’s the question you should always ask believers when they make unsupported assertions, ranging from “God is loving” to “Our souls live on after death.” The answer will always be one of two things: “The Bible says so,” or “I just know it to be true.” Neither of those are rational answers, but they satisfy the religious.
It is in fact the “how-do-you-know-that” query that really distinguishes New Atheism from Old. While atheists have always decried the lack of evidence for theism, it is the infusion of scientists and science-friendly people into atheism, starting with Carl Sagan and continuing on to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Pinker, and Dennett, that has made us realize that religious dogmas are in fact hypotheses, and you need reasons and evidence for accepting them. If you have none, then you have no reason to believe in God.
Nevertheless, religious dogma does change, but not because theology has found better reasons. It’s because a.) science has shown the dogma to be false (Genesis, Adam and Eve, creation, the Exodus, etc.) or b.) secular morality has shown that the tenets of religious belief are no longer supportable”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

hell as a place of fire, limbo, discrimination against gays, the Mormons’ refusal to let blacks be priests, etc. " Catholic official says that angels exist but are wingless http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/catholic-official-says-that-angels-exist-but-are-wingless/" December 21, 2013

Love, Death, God, People

“Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy—its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom—now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed “a revolt of the spirit against... a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism.””

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 4 : Goodbye to All That?

World, Democracy, Freedom, Change

“There can be no benefit of an exorcism. It’s not like there could ever be an instance where an actual demon is involved, and a priest would be helpless even in that situation if there were any reality to that. Even if there were some placebo effect to the ritual, it still encourages belief in things that would still persist in the imagination and thus never be fully cured even in the mind of believers. And if the problem stems from any sort of actual mental disorder, then the ritual only postpones or replaces actual medical attention.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Satanic Panic and Exorcism in Schools? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/09/21/satanic-panic-and-exorcism-in-schools/ (September 21, 2016)

Imagination, Problem, Reality

“For the poet, the imagination is paramount, and... he dwells apart in his imagination, as the philosopher dwells in his reason, and as the priest dwells in his belief … The imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Necessary Angel (1951), Imagination as Value

Imagination

“Even if the absence of evidence for a given god were not evidence of its absence, it would still be evidence that the belief in that god is unreasonable. That's the only proposition that any atheist of any kind has to demonstrate in order to win the argument. Because anything beyond that… is just having fun.”

Scott Clifton (1984) American television actor, musician, internet personality.

God, Atheism and Evidence, as Theoretical Bullshit, hosted on YouTube. (11 January 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9stJ8h2ilZU

God

“Anthropology has reached that point of development where the careful investigation of facts shakes our firm belief in the far-reaching theories that have been built up. The complexity of each phenomenon dawns on our minds, and makes us desirous of proceeding more cautiously. Heretofore we have seen the features common to all human thought.”

Franz Boas (1858–1942) German-American anthropologist

Franz Boas (1975) Facial paintings of the Indians of northern British Columbia. p. 4.

“Because our ladies mostly attend Kalatshepams, (Religious discourses) they have fallen prey to the superstitions, blind beliefs, and immorality by the false and fictituous propaganda of the Brahmins”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Quoted in Collected Works of Periyar E.V.R., p. 517.
Society

Falseness

“The central place of epistemology in modern philosophy is no accident… Knowledge was not a problem for the ruling philosophy of the Middle Ages; that the whole world which man's mind seeks to understand is intelligible to it was explicitly taken for granted. That people subsequently came to consider knowledge a problem implies that they had been led to accept certain different beliefs about the nature of man and about the things which he tries to understand.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Source: The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 2

People, Age, World, Intelligence

“There should be no differentiation amongst the people. All should be treated as equals. On this basis the Brahmin must give up his false prestige. In the interest of the society. I say that the blind beliefs should be given up. If the newspapers “Hindu” and the “Swadesamitran” carry on false propaganda that I am communal, I am not responsible for that.””

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 518.
Society

People, Communication, Falseness

“What makes economics different from and inferior to other sciences is the tenacity with which it holds to its core beliefs in the face of either contrary factual evidence or theoretical critiques that establish fundamental inconsistencies in its intellectual apparatus.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 7, There Is Madness In Their Method, p. 158

Science

“Like most philosophers, Kant worked to shore up the conventional beliefs of his time. Schopenhauer did the opposite. Accepting the arguments of Hume and Kant that the world is unknowable, he concluded that both the world and the individual subject that imagines it knows it are maya, dreamlike constructions with no basis in reality. … Schopenhauer accepted the sceptical side of Kant's philosophy and turned it against him. Kant demonstrated that we are trapped in the world of phenomena and cannot know things in themselves. Schopenhauer went one step further and observed that we ourselves belong in the world of appearances. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer was ready to follow his thoughts wherever they led. Kant argued that unless we accept that we are autonomous, freely choosing selves we cannot make sense of our moral experience. Schopenhauer responded that our actual experience is not of freely choosing the way we live but of being driven along by our bodily needs - by fear, hunger and, above all, sex.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Schopenhauer's Crux (p. 42-3)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Hunger, World, Fear, Sex

“Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives. The provost simply believes and is publicizing his belief that conservatives are more likely to commit hate crimes in their speeches. Not only does this promote hatred against conservatives, but it promotes violence against conservatives.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Response to a letter from University of Ottawa provost Francois Houle to use "restraint, respect and consideration" in her planned address there (21 March 2010), as quoted in "Coulter: Canadian U Provost Guilty of Hate Crimes" at Newsmax (23 March 2010) http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/coulter-canada-provost-hate/2010/03/23/id/353652. 2010

Hate, Law

“Some of the strongest supporters of the war declare that we are a Christian nation, yet use their religious beliefs to justify the war. They claim it is our Christian duty to remake the Middle East and attack the Muslim infidels. Evidently I have been reading from a different Bible. I remember something about “Blessed are the peacemakers.” My beliefs aside, Christian teaching of nearly a thousand years reinforces the concept of “The Just war theory.” This Christian theory emphasizes six criteria needed to justify Christian participation in war… The war in Iraq fails to meet almost all of these requirements. This discrepancy has generated anger and division within the Christian community. Some are angry because the war is being fought out of Christian duty, yet does not have uniform support from all Christians. Others are angry because they see Christianity as a religion as peace and forgiveness, not war and annihilation of enemies.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Why Are Americans So Angry?, June 29, 2006 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr062906.htm 2000s, 2006-2009

War, Peace, Religion, Communication

“Classical science was based upon the belief that it is possible to formulate both the position and velocity at one time of any given particle. It followed that knowledge of the position and velocity of a given number of particles would enable the future behavior of the whole collection to be accurately predicted. The principle of Heisenberg is that given the determination of position, its velocity can be stated only as of a certain order of probability, while if its velocity is determined the correlative factor of position can be stated only as of a certain order of probability. Both cannot be determined at once, from which it follows necessarily that the future of the whole collection cannot possibly be foretold except in terms of some order of probability.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Behavior, Knowledge, Science, Time

“I don’t get to just say what I want, as I work for a company and I have obligations, and so I can’t go around being disrespectful to everybody. However, with as much integrity and respect as possible, I would love any public opportunity to challenge conventional beliefs, especially ones religious in nature and especially ones that have affected my life. Someday it would be great to write a book on that kind of thing. I feel like I have something to say, and it’s not something everyone else is saying.”

Scott Clifton (1984) American television actor, musician, internet personality.

Responding to an interviewer's question, "Do you then see yourself being a motivational speaker, or a speaker who gets up and challenges ideology and religion?" in The Scott Clifton Interview – The Bold and the Beautiful, as quoted by Michael Fairman, hosted on Michaelfairmansoaps.com (20 September 2010)

Love, Life, Books, Feeling

“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/.

Science

“Do you not think that if all of us come to believe in and abide by these principles, that is, monotheism, worship of God, justice, respect for the dignity of man, belief in the Last Day, we can overcome the present problems of the world”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2006, Letter to George W. Bush, 2006

God, World, Justice, Problem

“It is always easy to blame the state and the men in uniform. But Islamic terror essentially does not emanate from uniforms and state power, but from a belief system which even the ordinary people have been fed. That is why a lot of Islamic terror never gets recorded by human-rights organizations like Amnesty International. A Christian Pakistani friend complained to me that Amnesty had not spoken out against the religious persecutions in his homeland, even when these are a grim and undeniable reality. The fact is that much of this persecution and discrimination is not ordered by the state (the type of culprit with which Amnesty is familiar), but is a spontaneous attitude among sections of the Muslim population, egged on by nothing except the omnipresent Islamic doctrine.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

Men, People, Reality

“Whereas: The unique features of this nation at its foundation was its establishment of a secular Constitution that separated government from religion — something never done before; and
Whereas: Our secular constitution has enabled people of all world views to coexist in harmony, undivided by sectarian strife; and
Whereas: President James Madison made clear the importance of maintaining this harmony when he said, "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the endless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries"; and
Whereas: The diversity of our people requires mutual respect and equal protection for all our citizens, including minority groups, if we are to remain "One nation, indivisible"; and
Whereas: It is the unfettered diversity of ideas and world views that have made our nation the strongest and most productive in the world; and
Whereas: Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief.
Now Therefore, I, Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota, do hereby proclaim that Thursday July 4, 2002 shall be observed as: Indivisible Day In the State of Minnesota.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Indivisible Day Proclamation (2002)

People, World, Religion, Idea

“It is not necessary to believe that a political consensus to focus on the lives of the most disadvantaged will happen tomorrow in order to recenter discrimination discourse at the intersection. It is enough, for now, that such an effort would encourage us to look beneath the prevailing conceptions of discrimination and to challenge the complacency that accompanies belief in the effectiveness of this framework. By so doing, we may develop language which is critical of the dominant view and which provides some basis for unifying activity. The goal of this activity should be to facilitate the inclusion of marginalized groups for whom it can be said: “When they enter, we all enter.””

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Effort

“In biology the Cartesian view of living organisms as machines, constructed from separate parts, still provides the dominant conceptual framework. Although Descartes' simple mechanistic biology could not be carried very far and had to be modified considerably during the subsequent three hundred years, the belief that all aspects of living organisms can be understood by reducing them to their smallest constituents, and by studying the mechanisms through which these interact, lies at the very basis of most contemporary biological thinking. This passage from a current textbook on modern biology is a clear expression of the reductionist credo: 'One of the acid tests of understanding an object is the ability to put it together from its component parts. Ultimately, molecular biologists will attempt to subject their understanding of cell structure and function to this sort of test by trying to synthesize a cell.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Source: The Turning Point (1982), Ch. 4. The Mechanistic View of Life.

Understanding, Thinking, Study, Parting

“The real choice is between obedience and expulsion. For this reason, there is a powerful tendency for people to want to believe that their thoughts and behavior at work are voluntary—the alternative, of perceiving the actual conflict, is simply too painful. Indeed, this struggle with conformity will be painful to the extent to which individuals are aware that it is real, to the extent to which they are aware of their own conflicting inner needs, thoughts and desires. A person will suffer more intensely the more he or she is strong and independent. Given the apparent hopelessness of resistance, there is a powerful and continuous incentive for individuals to become less aware of their own feelings, beliefs and needs. Indeed the only rational solution for an individual may often be to become dead inside, to become alienated from his or her feelings and desires.”

David Edwards (1962) british journalist, born 1962

Source: Burning All Illusions (1996), p. 36

Pain, People, Behavior, Feeling

“It is my belief that we have two responsibilities to pursue: Primarily, it is to get our house and garden, our place of living, in order, so that it supports us; Secondarily, it is to limit our population on earth, or we ourselves become the final plague. Both these duties are intimately connected, as stable regions create stable populations. If we do not get our cities, homes, and gardens in order, so that they feed and shelter us, we must lay waste to all other natural systems. Thus, truly responsible conservationists have gardens…”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 1.3

Home, Support, Nature, Housing

“What our enemies have sought to destroy is beyond their reach. It cannot be taken from us. It can only be surrendered.
My friends, we are again met on the field of political competition with our fellow countrymen. It is more than appropriate, it is necessary that even in times of crisis we have these contests, and engage in spirited disagreement over the shape and course of our government.
We have nothing to fear from each other. We are arguing over the means to better secure our freedom, and promote the general welfare. But it should remain an argument among friends who share an unshaken belief in our great cause, and in the goodness of each other.
We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always. Let us argue our differences. But remember we are not enemies, but comrades in a war against a real enemy, and take courage from the knowledge that our military superiority is matched only by the superiority of our ideals, and our unconquerable love for them.
Our adversaries are weaker than us in arms and men, but weaker still in causes. They fight to express a hatred for all that is good in humanity.
We fight for love of freedom and justice, a love that is invincible. Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong.
Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight.
We're Americans.
We're Americans, and we'll never surrender.
They will.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

Love, Men, War, Fear

“I don't have anything against organized religion per se. We all need something in our lives. I personally just have not accepted that belief. But I'm one of the few.”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

As quoted in response to the comment "For a miracle man, you're not very religious", in "10 questions for Lance Armstrong" by Bill Saporito in TIME magazine (28 September 2003)

Religion, Personality