Conviction Quotes - Page 27

• Personalism's insistence that only personality-finite and infinite-is ultimately real strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Real, Philosophical

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Politics, Moral

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.200, Beacon Press

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• Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, Justice, Triumph

  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn - Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• Personal religious convictions have no place in political campaigns or in dictating public policy.

  Geraldine Ferraro

  Religious, Political, Atheism

  Geraldine Ferraro, Linda Bird Francke (1985). “Ferraro: My Story”, p.211, Northwestern University Press

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• All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.

  Learned Hand

  Upset, Atheism, Purpose

  Learned Hand (1955). “A fanfare for Prometheus”

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• To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. Religious beliefs give a spurious spiritual dimension to tribal enmities.

  Peter Medawar

  Spiritual, Religious, Giving

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• It goes with the passionate intensity and deep conviction of the truth of a religious belief, and of course of the importance of the superstitious observances that go with it, that we should want others to share it - and the only certain way to cause a religious belief to be held by everyone is to liquidate nonbelievers. The price in blood and tears that mankind generally has had to pay for the comfort and spiritual refreshment that religion has brought to a few has been too great to justify our entrusting moral accountancy to religious belief.

  Peter Medawar

  Spiritual, Religious, Blood

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.210, Oxford University Press, USA

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• It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Father, Fall, Atheism

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2015). “The Necessity of Atheism”, p.8, Booklassic

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• When I first heard from the lips of Lucretia Mott that I had the same right to think for myself that Luther, Calvin, and John Knox had, and the same right to be guided by my own convictions, and would no doubt live a higher, happier life than if guided by theirs, it was like suddenly coming into the rays of the noon-day sun, after wandering with a rushlight in the caves the earth.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Thinking, Doubt, Atheism

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper (1889). “History of woman suffrage”

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• Whenever there is an organized movement to persuade people to believe or do something, whenever an effort is made to "propagate" a creed or set of opinions or convictions or to make people act as we want them to act, the means employed are called propaganda.

  Edwin Way Teale

  Believe, Mean, People

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• It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions.

  Tertullian

  Men, Atheism, Privilege

  Tertullian (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Tertullian (Annotated Edition)”, p.247, Jazzybee Verlag

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• One of the reasons why I, 'a medical man' decided to give up medicine was a firm conviction of the extraordinary influence on health of pleasurable excitement, especially when combined with fresh air and exercise. How frequently have I, with great difficulty, persuaded patients who were never off my doorsteps to take up golf, and how rarely, if ever, I have seen them in my consulting room again.

  Alister MacKenzie

  Giving Up, Exercise, Golf

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• One of my pet theories is that readers have built-in BS detectors that enable them to recognize insincerity in writers. David [Halberstam] was sincerity to the core. He believed in what he wrote, and that conviction conveyed itself to readers.

  Jonathan Yardley

  Pet, Sincerity, Theory

  "David Halberstam". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. April 24, 2007.

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• I'm not afraid of being dead, that's to say there's nothing to be afraid of. I won't know I'm dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I'm alive in any way at all, that'll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Strong, Would Be, Alive

  "Christopher Hitchens discusses life, death, cancer and God in interview with Newsnight". Newsnight interview, www.bbc.co.uk. November 26, 2010.

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• I learned [playing Chuck Berry] that there's something to be said for the courage of conviction, that sense of belief, being bold enough to believe in your vision. And there's a quote that really fits his particular energy. It says - they say don't go where the path may lead, but go where there's no path and leave a trail. I think that's exactly what Chuck did, you know. It's an inspiration to a lot of folks, not just musicians, but people everywhere.

  Mos Def

  Believe, Inspiration, Thinking

  Source: www.npr.org

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• If George W. Bush really has the courage of his convictions the United States very soon will either wind up dominating the United Nations (as it should) or rendering it impotent (which would probably be even better).

  Lyn Nofziger

  War, Wind, United States

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• When the German people trusting to the promises made by President Wilson in his Fourteen Points, laid down their arms in November 1918, a fateful struggle thereby came to an end for which perhaps individual statesmen, but certainly not the peoples themselves could be held responsible.
  The German nation put up such an heroic fight because it was sincere in its conviction that it had been wrongfully attacked and was therefore justified in fighting. the Peace Treaty of Versailles did not seem to be for the purpose of restoring peace to mankind, but rather to perpetuate hatred.

  Adolf Hitler

  Struggle, Fighting, People

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• So much of what passes for public life consists of little more than candidates without ideas, hiring consultants without conviction, to stage campaigns without content. The result, increasingly, is elections without voters.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Ideas, Campaigns, Littles

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• It is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.

  Michael Moorcock

  Lying, Profound, Concern

  Michael Moorcock (2008). “Elric: The Sleeping Sorceress”, p.312, Del Rey

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• ...I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.

  David Ricardo

  Honesty, Powerful, Thinking

  David Ricardo (1952). “Works and Correspondence: Letters, 1816-1818”, University Press

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• Any preacher who preaches beyond that which he has experienced is incapable of preaching with conviction.

  Billy Graham

  Preacher, Preaching, Incapable

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• Ninety percent of selling is conviction and 10 percent is persuasion.

  Shiv Khera

  Motivational Sales, Persuasion, Selling

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• [T]he one indispensable ingredient of science fiction [is] a belief in a world being changed by man's intellect, a conviction that what was being written could really happen.

  James Gunn

  Men, Fiction, World

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• It gave me no pleasure to see people drink in my opinions if they seemed ignorant of Jesus Christ and the value of being saved by Him. Sound conviction for sin, especially the sin of unbelief, and a heart set on fire to be saved by Christ, with a strong yearning for a truly sanctified soul-this was what delighted me; those were the souls I considered blessed.

  John Bunyan

  Strong, Jesus, Blessed

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• There is a fundamental difference between separation of church and state and denying the spiritual heritage of this country. Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. are Jefferson's words, 'The God Who gave us life gave us liberty -- can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?'

  Ronald Reagan

  Country, Spiritual, Differences

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