Quotes about believer
page 68

Jane Roberts photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Mark Manson photo
Jacob Bronowski photo
Lien Chan photo

“I believe that the peaceful development of cross-Strait ties will continue to be deepened and institutionalized.”

Lien Chan (1936) former Chairman of the Kuomintang

Lien Chan (2013) cited in " Hu Jintao meets Lien Chan, urging further co-op http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-02/26/content_16258173.htm" on China Daily, 26 February 2013

F. H. Bradley photo
Richard Matheson photo
James Branch Cabell photo

“You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.”

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 13 : Suggesting Themes of Universal Appeal

“Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. … Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

" Billions and Billions of Demons http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/" in: The New York Review of Books, 9 January 1997, p. 31
Review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
Quote often taken out of context, see Lewontin on materialism http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Lewontin_on_materialism on evolutionwiki.org, and for example this example http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102006325?q=Lewontin&p=par at Watchtower Online Library.

Claire Danes photo

“I don’t know if people are meant to be together. You have to have a lot in common, choose well and be really fortunate. It’s not like you’re sprinkled with fairy dust. You have to believe that love will be there when you need it.”

Claire Danes (1979) American actress

In "I Needed A Connection That Was Real" by Dotson Rader in Parade magazine (2 October 2005) http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2005/edition_10-02-2005/featured_1

Samuel Johnson photo

“Johnson observed, that "he did not care to speak ill of any man behind his back, but he believed the gentleman was an attorney."”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1770, p. 181
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

Frederick Winslow Taylor photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“We must choose to Believe In America. History is watching us now.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Cory Booker photo

“I’m a big believer that if America, if this country hasn’t broken your heart, then you don’t love her enough. Because there’s things that are savagely wrong in this country.”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

[Rutz, David, Booker: Things Are ‘Savagely Wrong’ in America, https://freebeacon.com/politics/booker-things-savagely-wrong-america/, 21 August 2018, The Washington Free Beacon, August 3, 2018]
2018

Stephen Baxter photo
Charles Stross photo
Muhammad photo
John Bright photo
Neil Kinnock photo
Robert Crumb photo

“The more I ponder God's way, the more I believe He changes a person, or molds a person through enlightenment. He changes a person's mind.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

David Byrne photo

“The better the singer's voice is, the harder it is to believe what they're saying. So I turn my weaknesses into an advantage.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

In the self-interview on Stop Making Sense

Colum McCann photo
Leona Lewis photo
Ray Comfort photo
Neil Young photo

“I never believed in much,
But I believed in you.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

From Hank to Hendrix
Song lyrics, Harvest Moon (1992)

Mukesh Ambani photo
Albert Einstein photo

“We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it.”

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

As recalled by his biographer Abraham Pais in Reviews of Modern Physics, 51, 863 (1979): 907. Cited in Boojums All The Way Through by N. David Mermin (1990), p. 81 http://books.google.com/books?id=bf5bjBk095UC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA81#v=onepage&q&f=false
Attributed in posthumous publications

Friedrich Hayek photo
Aron Ra photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Tom Brady photo
Michael Moorcock photo
John Bright photo

“The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plough as it is of him who minds the loom…If there be one view of the question which stimulates me to harder work in this cause than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom…And then a fat and sleek dean, a dignitary of the Church and a great philosopher, recommends for the consumption of the people—he did not read a paper about the supplies that were to be had in the great valley of the Mississippi—but he said that there were swede, turnip and mangel-wurzel; and the Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, if to out-Herod Herod himself, recommends hot water and a pinch of curry-powder. The people of England have not, even under thirty years of Corn Law influence, been sunk so low as to submit tamely to this insult and wrong. It is enough that a law should be passed to make your toil valueless, to make your skill and labor unavailing to procure for you a fair supply of the common necessaries of life—but when to this grievous iniquity they add the insult of telling you to go, like beasts that perish, to mangel-wurzel, or to something which even the beasts themselves cannot eat, then I believe the people of England will rise, and with one voice proclaim the downfall of this odious system.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League meeting (summer 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 93-94.
1840s

Jean-François Revel photo

“Europeans firmly believe these sorts of caricatures--because they are repeated every day by the elites.”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

2000s, Europe's Anti-American Obsession (2003)

Naim Qassem photo
Chris Stedman photo
Bill Moyers photo

“People who don't believe in government are likely to defile government.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

Commenting on the Bush Administration and the Harding Administration in an Interview on http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96648963 Fresh Air (5 November 2008)

Scott McClellan photo
Václav Havel photo

“I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Interview for the French newspaper Le Monde (29 April 1999); this statement is considered the source of the term w:Humanitarian bombing", frequently used about the Kosovo War.

John Steinbeck photo
Lauren Southern photo
S. S. Van Dine photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“A man will often believe himself a leader when he is led; while with his mind he endeavours to reach one goal, his heart insensibly drags him toward another.”

L'homme croit souvent se conduire lorsqu'il est conduit; et pendant que par son esprit il tend à un but, son coeur l'entraîne insensiblement à un autre.
Maxim 43.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Abbas Kiarostami photo
Anne Rice photo

“I was so conflicted and disillusioned about organized religion that I couldn't write. … I think my writings will go on being the writings of a believer in Christ. I think I'll be less frustrated and freer to write about the full dimension of what that means. But I write metaphysical thrillers, and how this works out in fiction is always mysterious: characters confront dilemmas. The worldview of the novel is certainly optimistic and that of a believer. What character will say what, I don't know until I start writing. …. Because I had written Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, I had become a public Christian. I wanted my readers to know that I was stepping aside from organized religion and the names Christian and Christianity because I wanted to exonerate myself from the things organized religion was doing in the name of Jesus. Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love. They have become associated with hatred, persecution, attempting to abolish the separation of church and state, and trying to pressure people to vote certain ways in elections. I wanted to make it clear that I did not in any way remain complicit with those things.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

"Q & A: Anne Rice on Following Christ Without Christianity" interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey in Christianity Today (17 Augutst 2010) http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=89167

C. Wright Mills photo

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Yanni photo

“I believe we're responsible for everything that happens to us.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Steve Blank photo

“Don't believe your own b. s. It's real easy to confuse funding with success.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Forbes "Lean And Meaningful: What Founders Still Need To Fix In The 21st Century" https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyinverso/2016/02/10/lean-and-meaningful-what-founders-still-need-to-fix-in-the-21st-century/#1a89897a2389. February 29, 2016 issue.

Neil Gaiman photo
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

“Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #54
Athenäum (1798 - 1800)

Jonathan Arnott photo

“As a right-winger and UKIP member, I believe in immigration. That sentence might sound slightly surprising coming from the General Secretary of a Party which is perceived by the media as anti-immigration. So let me explain. I reject uncontrolled immigration. I reject immigration beyond the ability of our country’s infrastructure to cope. Recently, I’ve been listening to the Bruce Springsteen song ‘American Land’. It starts off well enough, talking about people relocating to America as it grew and helping to build the country. That’s the kind of immigration that I believe in. Those who believe that they can have a better life (in this case in the UK), who come over and are determined to see themselves as part of British culture and will put their heart and soul into improving this country for all of us. I’m talking about the kind of person who is proud to come to the United Kingdom and shows that pride at every opportunity. Such people are a real asset to the country. That’s why I’m so angry at the ‘left-wing’ in British politics, which has consistently pursued an effective open-door immigration policy. Uncontrolled mass immigration doesn’t provide any of those benefits, but instead creates huge cultural problems for us. Worse still, it creates resentment. In Sheffield, I see workers losing their jobs to immigrant workers. All that does is create resentment and fuels the kind of racism that we’ve painstakingly worked to get rid of from our nation.”

Jonathan Arnott (1981) British politician

I believe….in immigration? http://www.jonathanarnott.co.uk/2013/06/i-believe-in-immigration/ (June 23, 2013)

Richard Cobden photo

“I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his other writings.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Said to Sir Louis Mallet by Cobden on his death bed within two days before his death, quoted in Richard Gowing, Richard Cobden (London: Cassell, 1890), p. 130.
1860s

George William Russell photo
Wilhelm Keitel photo

“Hitler gave us orders - and we believed in him. Then he commits suicide and leaves us to bear the guilt. He should have remained alive to bear his share.”

Wilhelm Keitel (1882–1946) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, April 6, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Samuel I. Prime photo
Muhammad photo
Ramsay MacDonald photo
Marvin Minsky photo
Philip Doddridge photo
Andreas Karlstadt photo
Stafford Cripps photo

“I do not believe it would be a bad thing for the British working-class if Germany defeated us. It would be a disaster for the profit-makers and capitalists, but not necessarily for the working-class.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech at Stockport (14 November 1936), The Manchester Guardian (15 November 1936), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 151.

Khushwant Singh photo

“I write what I believe in and don't care a damn about the consequences.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

I Don't Know One Editor In India Who Is Well-Read

Stephen Harper photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“In Canada they no have much segregation. But one day I am signing autographs and talking to white man and his wife outside park, and this other man say, "You not supposed to talk to white woman." I say, "No, I talk to the one I want. I talk to my friends. You believe in that stuff if you want. I don't do it."”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Man in the Pirate Uniform: Clemente is Spectacular" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zcxRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NGwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7274%2C5131234 by Myron Cope, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, August 23, 1960), p. 29
Other, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>

Malcolm Fraser photo

“The prime minister, because of his unreasoned drive to get his own way, his obstinacy, impetuous and emotional reactions, has imposed strains upon the Liberal Party, the government and the public service. I do not believe he is fit to hold the great office of prime minister, and I cannot serve in his government.”

Malcolm Fraser (1930–2015) Australian politician, 22nd Prime Minister of Australia

Fraser resigning from cabinet on 8 March 1971 and denouncing John Gorton's leadership http://australianpolitics.com/1971/03/09/malcolm-frasers-resignation-speech.html

Donald J. Trump photo

“But you cannot say anymore that the United States is going to pay for the wall. I am just going to say that we are working it out. Believe it or not, this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important talk about.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Full transcripts of Trump's calls with Mexico and Australia By Greg Miller, Julie Vitkovskaya and Reuben Fischer-Baum; Aug. 3, 2017 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/?utm_term=.95d2f93766d6 (Friday, January 27, 2017)
2010s, 2016, January

Christopher Hitchens photo
Hans Haacke photo
José Ortega Y Gasset photo
David Allen photo

“What do you want to have true? Pick something between total fantasy & 51% believable, get going, & readjust as you learn.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

17 January 2011 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/26824930679062528
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Annie Dillard photo
Tim Powers photo
Wallace Stevens photo

“What is there in life except one's ideas.
Good air, good friend, what is there in life?
Is it ideas that I believe?”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo
African Spir photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Tweet (22 November 2015) https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/668597149291184128
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016)

Louis Brandeis photo
David Lloyd George photo
James Inhofe photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“We believe it is imperative that farm laborers, among the most abused and neglected of all American workers, be included at last among those who benefit from the Fair Labor Standards Act. We want coverage extended to include those millions in retail trades, laundries, hospitals and nursing homes, restaurants, hotels, small logging operations and cotton gins who still work for starvation wages.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Statement on minimum wage legislation (18 March 1966)], as quoted in Now Is the Time. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Labor in the South: The Case for a Coalition (January 1986)
1960s

Dogen photo
Arthur Scargill photo

“I am opposed to Solidarity because I believe that it is an anti-socialist organisation which desires the overthrow of a socialist state.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

Letter to left-wing newspaper Newsline (7 September 1983), as quoted in the " Scargill angers unions with Solidarity attack http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19830908&id=hfU9AAAAIBAJ&sjid=CUkMAAAAIBAJ&pg=2345,1392758", Glasgow Herald (8 September 1983), p. 1

Norodom Sihanouk photo
George W. Bush photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Louis C.K. photo