Belief Quotes - Page 29

• My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God. We would be unappreciative of that gift if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves.

  Carl Sagan

  God, Passion, Religion

  Carl Sagan (1979). “Broca's brain: reflections on the romance of science”, Random House Inc

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• Can you avoid knowledge? You cannot! Can you avoid technology? You cannot! Things are going to go ahead in spite of ethics, in spite of your personal beliefs, in spite of everything.

  Jose Manuel Rodriguez Delgado

  Knowledge, Technology, Ethics

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• Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations whereas species were formerly thus connected.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Latter, Distinction

  Charles Darwin (1988). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 16: The Origin of Species, 1876”, p.443, NYU Press

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• I believe that natural history has lost much by the vague general treatment that is so common.

  Ernest Thompson Seton

  Believe, Science, Common

  Ernest Thompson Seton (2007). “Wild Animals I Have Known”, p.12, Yesterday's Classics

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• I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove.

  Randolph M. Nesse

  Believe, Science, People

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• If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Believe, Science, House

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• It may be conceit, but I believe the subject will interest the public, and I am sure that the views are original.

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, Science, Views

  Charles Darwin, Francis Darwin (1958). “Autobiography and Selected Letters”, p.211, Courier Corporation

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• Nothing can be believed unless it is first understood; and that for any one to preach to others that which either he has not understood nor they have understood is absurd.

  Peter Abelard

  Science, Firsts, Absurd

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• Some beliefs may be subject to such instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among millions of snails examined. If I happen to find one during my walk on Nobska beach tomorrow morning, a century of well nurtured negative evidence will collapse in an instant.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Beach, Morning, Science

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• The total number of people who understand relativistic time, even after eighty years since the advent of special relativity, is still much smaller than the number of people who believe in horoscopes.

  Yuval Ne'eman

  Believe, Science, Years

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• What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is the sort we intend.

  Tim Berners-Lee

  Believe, Science, Society

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• You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.

  Blaise Pascal

  Believe, Air, Feet

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• For a pediatrician to attack what has become the "bread and butter" of pediatric practice is equivalent to a priest denying the infallibility of the pope.

  Robert S. Mendelsohn

  Practice, Vaccines, Bread

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• Conviction is the conscience of the mind.

  Mary Augusta Ward

  Mind, Conviction, Conscience

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• Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early.

  Gunter Grass

  Lying, Believe, Grateful

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• The average man finds life very uninteresting as it is. And I think the reason why is that he is always waiting for something to happen to him instead of setting to work to make things happen

  A. A. Milne

  Men, Thinking, Average

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• A belief is only a thought that you keep thinking. So as you keep thinking this thought, you keep vibrationally attracting relative to that thought. So you confirm your own beliefs again and again and again and again and again. That's why someone who believes in cancer can confirm that belief, or someone who believes in robbery can confirm that belief. So everything is a sort of confirmation of belief.

  Esther Hicks

  Cancer, Believe, Thinking

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• You become what you believe - not what you wish or want but what you truly believe. Wherever you are in life, look at your beliefs. They put you there.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Believe, Wish, Looks

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• For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said "Think" The many have said "Believe!"

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Faith, Religious, War

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.51, Library of Alexandria

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• No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.

  Henry George

  Faith, Mother, Children

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• Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Faith, Order, Effects

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• As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Faith, Believe, Gambling

  Alfred Korzybski (1958). “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”, p.697, Institute of GS

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• If we, who live outside asylums, act as if we lived in a fictitious world- that is to say, if we are consistent with our beliefs- we cannot adjust ourselves to actual conditions, and so fall into many avoidable semantic difficulties. But the so-called normal person practically never abides by his beliefs, and when his beliefs are building for him a fictitious world, he saves his neck by not abiding by them. A so-called "insane" person acts upon his beliefs, and so cannot adjust himself to a world which is quite different from his fancy.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Faith, Fall, Insane Person

  Alfred Korzybski (1958). “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”, p.87, Institute of GS

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• Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Faith, Light, Next Week

  Robert Anton Wilson (2002). “Tsog: The Thing That Ate the Constitution”

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• Death makes me realize how deeply I have internalized the agnosticism I preach in all my books. I consider dogmatic belief and dogmatic denial very childish forms of conceit in a world of infinitely whirling complexity. None of us can see enough from one corner of space-time to know "all" about the rest of space-time.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Faith, Book, Space

  Robert Anton Wilson (2002). “Tsog: The Thing That Ate the Constitution”

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