Quotes about believer
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Karen Joy Fowler photo
Marilyn Monroe photo

“Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.”

Geneva Davis; chapter 1, p. 8
Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001)
Context: Change isn't easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Stephen King photo
Garth Nix photo

“Be sure to lie to your kids about the benevolent, all-seeing Santa Claus. It will prepare them for an adulthood of believing in God.”

Scott Dikkers (1965) American comic writer

Source: You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

Neal Shusterman photo
Jim Butcher photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Yann Martel photo
James Patterson photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
David Levithan photo

“Relationship Principle 5
Don't believe what anyone tells you about yourself.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Variant: Don't believe what anyone tells you about yourself.
Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Holly Black photo
Swami Vivekananda photo

“He is an atheist who does not believe in himself.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself.
Call to the Nation

Kate DiCamillo photo
René Descartes photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Anatole France photo
William James photo
Marilyn Monroe photo

“Always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will?

Allison DuBois photo
William Faulkner photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Sylvia Day photo
Brandon Mull photo

“Sometimes the most preposterous lies are the most believable.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Rise of the Evening Star

Roald Dahl photo
Marya Hornbacher photo
Maggie Nelson photo
David Sedaris photo
Will Rogers photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Philip Yancey photo
Richelle Mead photo
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo
Graham Greene photo
Rainer Werner Fassbinder photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

Michael Chabon photo
Terry Brooks photo
H.L. Mencken photo

“I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"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.

Libba Bray photo
Ivan Illich photo
Cassandra Clare photo
John Irving photo
Douglas Adams photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
John Crowley photo
Gloria Naylor photo
Jeffery Deaver photo
Karen Marie Moning photo

“I told you, Ms. Lane, never believe anything is dead-"
"- I know, I know, until you've 'burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Variant: Don't celebrate yet, Ms. Lane. Don't believe anything is dead until you've burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.
Source: Bloodfever

Rick Riordan photo
Mitch Albom photo
Isabel Allende photo
Rich Mullins photo
Stanisław Lem photo

“For moral reasons… the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created… intentionally.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

From Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984) http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=An+Interview+with+Stanislaw+Lem
Context: For moral reasons I am an atheist — for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.

Katharine Hepburn photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

As quoted in Philosophy on the Go (2007) by Joey Green, p. 222
General sources

Cassandra Clare photo
Gene Wolfe photo
John Quincy Adams photo

“To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so, is something worse.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Letter to William Eustis http://books.google.com/books?id=S088AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA319 (22 June 1809), published in Writings of John Quincy, Adams (1914), The Macmillan company.
Variant: All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.

Paulo Coelho photo
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo

“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

Variant: There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied int he one, I will indulge the other.
Source: Frankenstein

Pauline Baynes photo

“Believe what you like, but don't believeyou read without questioning it.”

Pauline Baynes (1922–2008) English illustrator of children's books

Source: Questionable Creatures: A Bestiary

Janet Evanovich photo
Joyce Meyer photo
William Saroyan photo

“Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Statement to the Associated Press, five days before his death. (13 May 1981)

Cassandra Clare photo
Richard Bach photo
Philippa Gregory photo
Margaret Mead photo

“I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed in Psychology (1990) by Carole Wade and Carol Tavris, p. 372
1990s

Cassandra Clare photo
Amy Tan photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Scott Westerfeld photo
Kay Redfield Jamison photo

“Love, like life, is much stranger and far more complicated than one is brought up to believe.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness