Quotes about believer
page 65

Douglas Fraser photo

“I believe leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in our country—a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society.”

Douglas Fraser (1916–2008) American labor leader

<sub>Resignation letter from National Committee of Labor-Management Group</sub> http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fraserresign.html, July 17, 1978; Published in: North Country Anvil, Nr. 28, (1978) p. 22

Eric Greitens photo

“Their superstitions will allow them to believe things without much critical thought.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 6 (p. 76)

Muhammad photo

“Abu Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "This world is the prison of the believer and the paradise of the unbeliever."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 470
Sunni Hadith

Muammar Gaddafi photo
Tiffany Trump photo

“Hitler made it impossible to keep believing in pacifism, which was one of the many terrible things he did to the world.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

"A hundred years of thinking about God" (1998)

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak photo
Giorgio Morandi photo
Cristoforo Colombo photo
Charles Stross photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo
Lewis Pugh photo

“The most powerful form of self-belief comes from believing in something greater than you. Because when you’ve got purpose, everything becomes possible.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 86
21 Yaks And A Speedo (2013)

“I'm a frustrated patriot. I'm not a politician. I'm not savvy with radio and TV. But I believe I can make a change, and that's what I'm here for. I'm here to give people a third choice.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Jourdan, Kristi, Tea Party hopeful - gives voters third choice, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1B, March 8, 2010]

Bruce Springsteen photo
Ralston Bowles photo

“I just believe that life is more than rehearsing how to die.”

Ralston Bowles (1952) American musician

From the song "Draper" on the album Carwreck Conversations (2004)

Mario Cuomo photo
Edwin M. Stanton photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“I have never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, 1998, as quoted by http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-24/tech/30081331_1_singaporean-lee-kuan-yew-political-landscape
1990s

Emil M. Cioran photo

“Who does not believe in Fate proves that he has not lived.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

Richard Leakey photo
Sam Harris photo
Brigham Young photo
Indra Nooyi photo

“Do you remember campaigns like Keep America Beautiful? What about ‘buckle up’? I believe we need an approach like this to attack obesity. Let us be good industry that does 100% of what is possibly can-not grudgingly, but willingly.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

Her exhortation to her executives with her mantram “Performance with a Purpose” quoted in [Nelson, Debra L., Quick, James Campbell, Organizational Behavior.: Science, the Real World, and You, http://books.google.com/books?id=hSnFaZ9ddnsC&pg=PA99, 9 February 2010, Cengage Learning, 978-1-4390-4229-8, 99–]

Bill Gates photo

“I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

OS/2 Programmers Guide, November 1987
1980s

Heather Brooke photo

“If you believe the promise that an authoritarian state makes that if it has enough knowledge on every citizen it will keep people safe. I think that’s a false promise. It doesn’t actually happen. If that was the case then East Germany would be a really incredible place to live and in fact it wasn’t, it was really horrible, most of these places were really horrible.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/08/17/heather-brooke-data-deali_n_928985.html "Heather Brooke: Data Dealing Is A Bigger Scandal Than Phone Hacking", Interview with Dina Rickman, 17 August 2011.
Attributed, In the Media

“I was filled with joy when studying quantum physics at the university as a means to understand the universe. But at the same time, I was preoccupied with the oppressive conditions in my country and the tyranny suffered by our universities, intellectuals, and the media. Like many others in our universities, I felt compelled to join the struggle for freedom. What we experience is a decades-old tyranny, that cannot tolerate freedom of speech and thought. In the name of religion, it restricts and punishes science, intellect, and even love. It labels as a threat to national security and toxic to society whatever is not compatible with its political and economic interests. It considers punishing unwelcome ideas as a positive thing. It does not tolerate differences of opinion; it responds to logic not by logic, discussion or dialog, but by suppression. By tyranny I mean a ruling power that tries to make only one voice—the voice of a ruling minority in Iran—dominant, with no regard for pluralism in the society. By tyranny I mean a judiciary that disregards even the Islamic Republic’s own constitution, and sentences intellectuals, writers, journalists, and political and civil activists to long prison terms, without due process and trial in a court of law. … By tyranny I mean power-holders who believe they stand above the law and who disregard justice and the urgent demands of the human conscience.”

Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist

Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)

Toni Morrison photo

“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.”

Paradise (1997)

Pat Conroy photo
Sarah Monette photo
Jessica Lynch photo
Colin Wilson photo
Patrick Pearse photo
Genesis P-Orridge photo
Richard Stallman photo

“Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Sayings" at Richard Stallman's personal site (c. 2001)
2000s

Immanuel Kant photo

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

Preface to the Second Edition [Tr. F. Max Müller], (New York, 1900), p. 690; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14022383M/Memorabilia_mathematica, Published 1914. p. 10
Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Bernard Baruch photo
John Newton photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Alexander H. Stephens photo

“As to whether we shall have war with our late confederates, or whether all matters of differences between us shall be amicably settled, I can only say that the prospect for a peaceful adjustment is better, so far as I am informed, than it has been. The prospect of war is, at least, not so threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President Lincoln’s inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was expected. Fort Sumter, it is believed, will soon be evacuated. What course will be pursued toward Fort Pickens, and the other forts on the gulf, is not so well understood. It is to be greatly desired that all of them should be surrendered. Our object is peace, not only with the North, but with the world. All matters relating to the public property, public liabilities of the Union when we were members of it, we are ready and willing to adjust and settle upon the principles of right, equity, and good faith. War can be of no more benefit to the North than to us. Whether the intention of evacuating Fort Sumter is to be received as an evidence of a desire for a peaceful solution of our difficulties with the United States, or the result of necessity, I will not undertake to say. I would feign hope the former. Rumors are afloat, however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point is, keep your armor bright and your powder dry.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Steven Novella photo

“What defines a cult is not what they believe, at all. It's how they behave. The belief system is almost incidental.”

Steven Novella (1964) American neurologist, skepticist

SGU, Podcast #253, May 19th, 2010 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/253
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, Podcast, 2010s

Justine Tunney photo

“I believe that the hetero-normative, cis-normative, patriarchal, state-capitalist establishment is evil and must be destroyed.”

Justine Tunney Software developer from the USA

Translating Anarchy http://occupywallstreet.net/story/translating-anarchy,

George Galloway photo

“Your Excellency, Mr President: I greet you, in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq and continue to oppose the war by economic means, which is aimed to strangle the life out of the great people of Iraq. I greet you, too, in the name of the Palestinian people, amongst whom I've just spent two weeks in the occupied Palestinian territories. I can honestly tell you that there was not a single person to whom I told I was coming to Iraq and hoping to meet with yourself who did not wish me to convey their heartfelt, fraternal greetings and support. And this was true, especially at the base in the refugee camps of Jabaliyah and Beach Camp in Gaza, in the Balatah refugee camp in Nablus and on the streets of the towns and villages in the occupied lands.I thought the president would appreciate knowing that even today, three years after the war, I still met families who were calling their newborn sons Saddam; and that two weeks ago, when I was trapped inside the Orient House, which is the Palestinian headquarters in al-Quds [Jerusalem], with 5,000 armed mustwatinin [settlers] outside demonstrating, pledging to tear down the Palestinian flag from the flagpole, the hundreds of shabab [youths] inside the compound were chanting that they wish to be with a DSh K [machine gun] in Baghdad to avenge the eyes of Abu Jihad. And the Youth Club in Silwan, which is the one of the most resistant of all the villages around Jerusalem, asked me to ask the president's permission if they could enrol him as an honourary member of their club and to present him with this flag from holy Jerusalem.I wish to say, sir, that I believe that we are turning the tide in Europe, that the scale of the humanitarian disaster which has been imposed upon the Iraqi people is now becoming more and more widely known and accepted. Fifty-five British members of parliament opposed the war, but 125 are demanding the lifting of the embargo; and this does not include the invisible section of the Conservative Party who must also be moving in that direction, and Sir Edward Heath is being a very persuasive advocate inside the Conservative Party.It is my belief that we must convey the very clear picture that 1994 has to be the year of the ending of the embargo against Iraq. Otherwise, famine and all the awful consequences, including acts of despair by Iraqis, will be the result; and this is the message we must convey to civilized opinion in Europe.Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem
"'I greet you in the name of thousands of Britons'", The Times, January 20, 1994, citing BBC monitoring service at 9 PM on January 19 as its source.
Speech to Saddam Hussein, January 19, 1994.
Source: See also David Morley Gorgeous George: The Life and Adventures of George Galloway, London: Politicos, 2007, p. 210-11. Galloway disputes the reporting of this quote and has repeatedly stated that the conclusion was a salute to "the Iraqi people" rather than Saddam Hussein personally.

Fred Rogers photo

“I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm

PewDiePie photo
Paul Johnson photo
Sumio Iijima photo

“Research can be undertaken in any kind of environment, as long as you have the interest. I believe that true education means fostering the ability to be interested in something.”

Sumio Iijima (1939) Japanese nanotechnologist

About myself, To the younger generation http://www.nec.co.jp/rd/en/innovative/cnt/myself.html, in Innovative Engine, column for NEC researchers, Sep.25, 2007 (4th edition)

Bill Gates photo
Alexander Bain photo

“The arguments for the two substances - mind and body - have, we believe, entirely lost their validity; they are no longer compatible with ascertained science and clear thinking. One substance with two sets of attributes, two sides (a physical and a mental), a double-faced unity, would appear to comply with all the exigencies of the case.”

Alexander Bain (1818–1903) Scottish philosopher and educationalist

Alexander Bain. Mind and Body: The Theories of their Relation (1872), p. 196; as cited in: The Popular Science Monthly http://books.google.com/books?id=sysDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA162, Vol. 27, June 1885, p. 162.

Horace Bushnell photo
John McCain photo

“As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it -- along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

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

February 2008 http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120451614688707083.html
2000s, 2008

Owen Lovejoy photo

“I poured on a rainstorm of fire and brimstone as hot as I could, and you know something of what that is. I believe that I never said anything more savage in the pulpit or on the stump.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

Letter to Eunice Lovejoy https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA192#v=onepage&q&f=false
1860s

John Pilger photo
Steve Allen photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Sarah Palin photo

“We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation. This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Fundraiser in Greensboro, North Carolina, , quoted in [2008-10-17, Palin Touts the ‘Pro-America’ Areas of the Country, Elizabeth, Holmes, Washington Wire, The Wall Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/17/palin-touts-the-pro-america-areas-of-the-country/]
2014

George Eliot photo

“He fled to his usual refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences – perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting prudence.
In this point of trusting in some throw of fortune's dice, Godfrey can hardly be called old-fashioned. Favourable Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance, that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion, is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 9 (at page 73-74)

Muhammad photo

“Abu Musa reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "A believer in respect of another believer is like a building whose parts support one another." and he intertwined his fingers.”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 2, hadith number 222
Sunni Hadith

Alfred the Great photo

“Never believe the speech of all men, nor all the things that you hear sung.”

Alfred the Great (849–899) King of Wessex

The Proverbs of Alfred, st. 19, as published in The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (1848) http://archive.org/stream/dialogueofsalomo00kembuoft#page/226/mode/2up/search/Alfred, edited by John Mitchell Kemble, p. 237.
Misattributed

Richard Nixon photo
John Mearsheimer photo

“I believe that the existing power structures in Europe and Northeast Asia are not sustainable through 2020.”

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 10, Great Power Politics in the Twenty First Century, p. 385

M. K. Hobson photo
Stanisław Lem photo
Clarence Darrow photo
Kátya Chamma photo

“The independent project, in a general way, requests a constant work to spread, in the traditional way and in the alternative circuit. It is a fight… but I believe that it is the way.”

Kátya Chamma (1961) Brazilian singer and writer

Source: Interview at Recanto das Letras http://recantodasletras.com.br/entrevistas/625556, 2007.

Robert Olmstead photo
Harry Chapin photo
Yuval Noah Harari photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Jane Roberts photo
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Daniel Barenboim photo
Jean Metzinger photo
Robin Lane Fox photo

“Olympia's royal ancestry traced back to the hero Achilles, and the blood of Helen of Troy was believed to run on her father's side.”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.44

Piet Mondrian photo
James Fenimore Cooper photo
Ann Coulter photo

“I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than "climate change."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/902373016818126849 (August 30, 2017)
2017

“I believe the essence of the Independence Day is missing. We celebrate it like any other holiday, which is wrong. We must celebrate our independence everyday, not just on one day of the year.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

On Indian Independence Day Celebrations http://www.ilovekolkata.in/index.php/My-City/Independence-means.html (2010)

Benjamin Spock photo

“We used to think of cow's milk as a nearly perfect food. However, over the past several years, researchers have found new information that has caused many of us to change our opinion. This has provoked a lot of understandable controversy, but I have come to believe that cow's milk is not necessary for children. First, it turns out that the fat in cow's milk is not the kind of fat ("essential fatty acids") needed for brain development. Instead, milk fat is too rich in the saturated fats that promote artery blockages. Also, cow's milk can make it harder for a child to stay in iron balance. Milk is extremely low in iron and slows down iron absorption. It can also cause subtle blood loss in the digestive tract that causes the child to lose iron. … Some children have sensitivities to milk proteins, which show up as ear problems, respiratory problems, or skin conditions. Milk also has traces of antibiotics, estrogens, and other things a child does not need. There is, of course, nothing wrong with human breast milk — it is perfect for infants. For older children, there are many good soy and rice milk products and even nondairy "ice creams" that are well worth trying. If you are using cow's milk in your family, I would encourage you to give these alternatives a try.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), p. 346

Rollo May photo
Edward Hopper photo

“I do not know why I chose one subject rather than another unless I believe them to be the best synthesis of my inner experience.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

quoted by Floyd Goodrich, in Edward Hopper, H. Abrams, New York 1971
1941 - 1967

Joseph Joubert photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the white man.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1780s, Letter to the Marquis de Chastellux (1785)

Joanna Newsom photo
Zainab Salbi photo
Rab Butler photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo