Conviction Quotes - Page 18

• As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

  Saul Bellow

  Art, Philosophy, Science

  "The Adventures of Augie March". Book by Saul Bellow. Chapter 6, 1953.

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• One has to see oneself through one's actions, works, and mind. Knowing the Self by the self is not as easy as writing that line. A #‎ yogi sees things in every movement he makes, maybe when practicing, maybe when teaching, or maybe when talking to people. You should have courage in your convictions and pursue what is dear to you all these years.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Teaching, Writing, Self

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• Change arises from conviction. Stop voting in fear. Start voting for hope.

  George Monbiot

  Voting, Arise

  "Follow your convictions – this could be the end of the politics of fear". www.theguardian.com. January 28, 2015.

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• It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, -- some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church. On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Faith, Believe, Blessed

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1874). “The Gods, and Other Lectures”, p.171

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• Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Intelligent, Doe

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• It is my conviction that pure mathematical construction enables us to discover the concepts and the laws connecting them, which gives us the key to the understanding of nature ... In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

  Albert Einstein

  Reality, Keys, Law

  "On the Method of Theoretical Physics". Lecture at the University of Oxford (1933), as quoted in Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 63., p. 237, 1990.

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• All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.

  George Orwell

  Law, Profound, Wickedness

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “It is what I think: 1947-1948”

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• Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Disease, Moral

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• The conviction that all men are equal by reason of their natural dignity has been generally accepted. Hence racial discrimination can no longer be justified.

  Pope John XXIII

  Men, Racism, Dignity

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• Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social life presents itself, the same conviction comes: Independent bread alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Independent, Men, Feminism

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• The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Believe, Doe, Facts

  Charles Dudley Warner (1872). “Back-log studies and My summer in a garden”, p.83

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• By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.

  Jacques Barzun

  Artist, People, World

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• The blind conviction that we have to do something about other people's reproductive behavior, and that we may have to do it whether they like it or not, derives from the assumption that the world belongs to us, who have so expertly depleted its resources, rather than to them, who have not.

  Germaine Greer

  People, World, May

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• Beneath everything else, North and West, there ran a profound, unvoiced, almost subconscious conviction that the [American] nation was going to go on growing-in size, in power, in everything a man could think of-and in that belief there was a might and a fury that would take form instantly at the moment of shock.

  Bruce Catton

  Destiny, Men, Thinking

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• The first duty of man is to take none of the principles of conduct upon trust; to do nothing without a clear and individual conviction that it is right to be done.

  William Godwin

  Men, Principles, Done

  William Godwin (1793). “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: And Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness”, p.597

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• We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.

  Anna Quindlen

  America, Might, Certainty

  Anna Quindlen (2010). “Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private”, p.170, Ballantine Books

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• Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.

  Robertson Davies

  Book, Ignorance, Stuff

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• It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Art, Judging, Criticism

  Igor Stravinsky (1970). “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons”, p.87, Harvard University Press

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• One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Years, Twenties, Today

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• It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions.

  Hannah Arendt

  Government, Opponents, Dramatic

  Hannah Arendt (2006). “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”, p.206, Penguin

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• Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Lying, Sleep, Forever

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• What in me is pure conviction is simple prejudice in you.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Simple, Prejudice, Pure

  Phyllis McGinley (1951). “A Short Walk from the Station”

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• The only true hope for civilization-the conviction of the individual that his inner life can affect outward events and that, whether or not he does so he is responsible for them.

  Stephen Spender

  Civilization, Events, Doe

  Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.285, Univ of California Press

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• I have always defended my convictions and what I believed to be the truth.

  Mikhail Khodorkovsky

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• By the mind one is bound; by the mind one is freed. ... He who asserts with strong conviction: "I am not bound, I am free," becomes free.

  Ramakrishna

  Strong, Mind, Bounds

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