Conviction Quotes - Page 15

• What are the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and skepticism is a sin.

  Thomas Huxley

  Believe, Government, People

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.17

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• In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds - that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Country, Religious, Government

  "American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 438". Judicial opinion, 1950.

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• I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Country, Government, Police

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• The belief may be too often mistaken, but the illusion of coming into direct contact with the past is intoxicating and persuasive, and can result in an interpretation that carries conviction. Sometimes confidence is all that's needed.

  Charles Rosen

  Confidence, Past, May

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• I tried to instill a different motivation, to give them the security and the conviction that they were doing something good, something necessary, something useful - if you want to use a grandiose expression, that they were doing something for peace.

  Markus Wolf

  Motivation, Expression, Giving

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• Moreover, broad plans commensurate with our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy.

  Kelly Miller

  War, Soldier, Enemy

  Kelly Miller (1919). “Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights: An Intensely Human and Brilliant Account of the World War; why American Entered the Conflict; what the Allies Fought For; and a Thrilling Account of the Important Part Taken by the Negro in the Tragic Defeat of Germany ...”

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• And indeed this theme has been at the centre of all my research since 1943, both because of its intrinsic fascination and my conviction that a knowledge of sequences could contribute much to our understanding of living matter.

  Frederick Sanger

  Understanding, Fascination, Research

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• The former conviction that these two kingdoms were wholly different in structure, in function, and in kind of life, was not seriously disturbed by the difficulties which the naturalist encountered when he undertook to define them.

  Asa Gray

  Two, Different, Kingdoms

  Asa Gray (1880). “Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College”

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• Hope? Hope is not the absence of tragedy, my friend. It is the conviction that tragedy can be endured. Hope is the spark in you that is not subdued in the face of the vast and callous indifference of the universe. Hope is that which is not shattered by hardship. Hope is the urge to fight what is wrong even when you know it will destroy you. Hope is the decision to love and need someone knowing that they will one day die. For me to promise that there are no obstacles would be the cruelest lie I could possibly tell. That lie is not hope. Hope is the will which needs no lies.

  Travis Beacham

  Love, Lying, Fighting

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• For the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

  D. A. Carson

  Love, Pain, Teaching

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• He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him

  George Bernard Shaw

  Power, Style

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.1052, e-artnow

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• Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Equality, Light, Views

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• The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.

  Walter Lippmann

  Eye, Men, Essence

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• The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law. The person of the King of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable: There is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable, no punishment to which he can be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Kings, Law, Punishment

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2007). “The Federalist Papers”, p.524, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• Coaching is salesmanship. Coaching is winning players over and convincing them they have to play together. It takes a team conviction to play together to make things work.

  Phil Jackson

  Team, Winning, Player

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• ... my convictions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of the light within us, resting on truth as authority, rather than 'taking authority for truth.'

  Lucretia Mott

  Light, Authority, Quaker

  "Eminent women of the age". Book by James Parton et. al., p. 375, 1868.

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• This was the feeling that Ms. Hempel couldn't shake: a conviction that she spent her days among people at the age when they are most purely themselves. How could she not be depleted when she came home, having been exposed for hours, without protection, to all those thrumming radiant selves? Here they were, just old enough to have discovered their souls, but not yet dulled by the ordinary act of survival, not yet practiced in dissembling.

  Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

  Home, Self, People

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• I am a teacher... The life I lead is the most agreeable I can imagine. [In the] classroom ... there await me a group of intelligent and curious young ... [people] who read the books assigned them with a sense of adventure and discovery, discuss them with zest, and listen appreciatively to explications I may offer. What makes the process most satisfying is the conviction that ... education is mankind's most important enterprise.

  Moses Hadas

  Education, Teacher, Book

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• We need people who influence their peers and who cannot be detoured from their convictions by peers who do not have the courage to have any convictions.

  Joe Paterno

  Leadership, Sports, People

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• I call upon both Republicans and Democrats to work with us to have a national ID card that is free and accessible. President Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King recognized was the greatest step for society was that short step into the voting booth. If we are to be true to their courage and conviction, we must make that short step as easy as possible. Surely, if we can land a spaceship on Mars, we can certainly put a voter ID card in the hand of every eligible voter.

  Andrew Young

  Kings, Hands, Land

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• Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion
  of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is
  in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Country, Simple, Men

  "'L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution' ('The Old Regime and the Revolution')". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Gerald Bevan. Author's Foreword, 2008.

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• I firmly believe that if you follow a path that interests you, not to the exclusion of love, sensitivity, and cooperation with others, but with the strength of conviction that you can move others by your own efforts, and do not make success or failure the criteria by which you live, the chances are you'll be a person worthy of your own respects.

  Neil Simon

  Believe, Moving, Effort

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• The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we aren’t libertarians if we tolerate it.

  Harry Browne

  Errors, Government, People

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• Genuine contempt, on the other hand, is the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Hands, Genuine, Contempt

  "Counsels and Maxims". Book by Arthur Schopenhauer translated by T. Bailey Saunders (Volume 2, Chapter 24, § 324), 1851.

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• Che Guevara taught us we could dare to have confidence in ourselves, confidence in our abilities. He instilled in us the conviction that struggle is our only recourse. He, was a citizen of the free world that together we are in the process of building. That is why we say that Che Guevara is also African and Burkinabè.

  Thomas Sankara

  Struggle, Self Confidence, Taught Us

  "We are Heirs of the World's Revolutions: Lessons from Thomas Sankara" by Akinyemi Adeseye, May 15, 2010.

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