quotations about belief
At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
On Certainty
Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.
GENE WOLFE
The Shadow of the Torturer
When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through,
And all too narrow for the broadening soul,
Give me the fine, firm texture of the new,
Fair, beautiful and whole!
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Old and New"
What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Belief needs something terrible to make it work, I find--blood, nails, a bit of anguish.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing them becomes too high.
RANSOM RIGGS
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
RAY BRADBURY
The October Country
There can be no merit in believing something which you can neither explain nor understand.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
To learn a belief without belief is to sing a song without the tune.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Telling
If you only believe when it's easy, you don't really believe.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly
Maturity of mind is best shown in slow belief.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
MAX BORN
attributed, The New Intimacy
I don't have to run from anything because I don't believe in anything.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; they did not engender those beliefs, and they are powerless to destroy them.
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook L", Aphorisms
Belief is involuntary; nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Declaration of Rights"
Belief was immune to logic; it operated by its own laws.
JAMES SIEGEL
Detour
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head, or a very short creed.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
If what we worship fail us, still the fire
Burns on, and it is much to have believed.
AMY LOWELL
"Hero-Worship"
Just as every man must see for himself, so every man must believe for himself. Acceptation of truth is a purely personal, individual act.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity