Conviction Quotes - Page 24

• COMMITMENT is the first step to every good thing I know, and the only step that matters when it comes to achievement. It inspires and attracts people, shows them you have conviction and goals, that you are focused and determined. And the commitment that is based on values will endure. Any time you make choices based on solid life values, you are in a better position to sustain your level of commitment, because you don't have to continually re-evaluate its importance.

  John C. Maxwell

  Commitment, People, Goal

  FaceBook post by John C. Maxwell from Sep 25, 2014

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• It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

  George Eliot

  Struggle, Love Is, Iron

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.1166, Wordsworth Editions

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• Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, Passion, Reality

  Aldous Huxley (2017). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals”, p.153, Routledge

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• Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices, opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid first of all of its psychological causes. Only when this has been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to get rid of the economic and political causes.

  Aldous Huxley

  Real, War, Political

  Aldous Huxley (2017). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals”, p.78, Routledge

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• Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government.

  Learned Hand

  Passion, Men, Law

  Learned Hand (1968). “The art and craft of judging: the decisions of Judge Learned Hand”

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• Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. ... humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Humanity, Matter, Moments

  "Kulturphilosophie". Book by Albert Schweitzer. Translated by C. T. Campion as "Philosophy of Civilisation" (1949) Chapter 26, 1923.

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• I write from a thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered--that is for me, and, so being, the not being listened to by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me.

  Robert Browning

  Writing, Belief, Thorough

  Robert Browning (2015). “Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett”, p.261, e-artnow sro

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• When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Truth, Peculiar, Said

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

  Ayn Rand

  Truth, Integrity, Knowledge

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.101, Penguin

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• If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty  to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity.

  Ayn Rand

  Loyalty, Integrity, Passion

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.173, Penguin

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• Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.

  David Mamet

  Prayer, Firsts, Existence

  David Mamet (2009). “Faustus”, p.26, Vintage

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• We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself.

  Jane Addams

  Forget, Results, Accumulation

  Jane Addams, Charlene Haddock Seigfried (2002). “Democracy and Social Ethics”, p.33, University of Illinois Press

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• Whether a law be void for its repugnancy to the Constitution, is, at all times, a question of much delicacy, which out seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in doubtful case. ... But it is not on slight implication and vague conjecture that the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers, and its acts to be considered as void. The opposition between the Constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.

  John Marshall

  Strong, Law, Judging

  Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 128, 1810.

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• The big lock-up is about drugs. Here's the real scam. The drug war is one of the games to get more convictions and prisoners.

  Jerry Brown

  Real, War, Games

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• I feel my disease, and I feel that my want of alarm and lively affecting conviction forms its most obstinate ingredient; I try to stir up the emotion, and feel myself harassed and distressed at the impotency of my own meditations. But why linger without the threshold in the face of a warm and urgent invitation? "Come unto me." Do not think it is your office to heal one part of the disease, and Christ's to heal the remainder.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Thinking, Office, Meditation

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• Religion, in its most general view, is such a Sense of God in the soul, and such a conviction of our obligations to him, and of our dependence upon him, as shall engage us to make it our great care to conduct ourselves in a manner which we have reason to believe will be pleasing to him.

  Philip Doddridge

  Believe, Views, Soul

  Philip Doddridge (1825). “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul: Illustrated in a Course of Serious and Practical Addresses”, p.21

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• He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Wise, Believe, Thinking

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1216, Delphi Classics

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• Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Variables, Sometimes, Consistent

  Ambrose Bierce (2015). “A Cynic Looks at Life”, p.51, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

  Doris Lessing

  Party, Reality, People

  "A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

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• Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.

  Jean Cocteau

  Venture, Youth

  Jean Cocteau (2013). “The Difficulty of Being”, p.40, Melville House

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• I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.

  Andy Grove

  Real, Thinking, Two

  "Rotman on Design: The Best on Design Thinking from Rotman Magazine". Book by Roger Martin and ‎Karen Christensen, p. 213, 2013.

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• Irrespective of doubts and convictions, and for the Infinite Love I bear for one and all, I continue to come as the Avatar, to be judged time and again by humanity in its ignorance, in order to help man distinguish the Real from the false.

  Meher Baba

  Real, Ignorance, Men

  "The God Man: The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an Interpretation of His Silence and Spiritual Teaching". Book by Charles Benjamin Purdom, December 25, 1964.

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• The wrath that on conviction subsides into mildness, is the wrath of a generous mind.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Anger, Wrath, Mind

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

  David Hume

  Morning, Night, Silence

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.339, 谷月社

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• The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Attitude, Views, Order

  "Freedom from Fear". Book by Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991.

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