Belief

Theocracy has always been the synonym for a bleak and narrow, if not a fierce and blood-stained tyranny.
~ William Archer, Quoted in What Great Men Think of Religion.

Brother, the creed would stifle me
That shelters you.
~ Karle Wilson Baker, Creeds

It is . . . in harmony with all we know to entertain a belief in an unseen world, in which myriads of living creatures exist, some with faculties like our own, and others with faculties beneath or transcending our own; and it is possible that the evolutionary development of such a world has run on parallel lines to our own.
~ Sir William Fletcher Barrett, FRS, On the Threshold of the Unseen (1917).

I am glad enough to have something to do that is worth doing; something to believe in; something to hope for. You -- what do you believe in? What is there in heaven or earth that you believe in?
~ William Black, Sunrise: A Story Of These Times (1881). Chapter I. A First Interview

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
~ William Blake, The Pickering Manuscript (c. 1803). Auguries of Innocence

Whether you realize it or not, I believe there were at least two more airplanes that were headed for major installations in this country. I believe that there was one headed for the White House, and there was one headed for the Capitol, but they were thwarted by the hand of God.
~ Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin (on 9-11), Speech at Celebrate America Event, Good Shepherd Church, Sandy OR (21 June 2003).

One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.
~ William Jennings Bryan, testimony during The Scopes Evolution Trial (July 1925)

There is no more reason to believe that man descended from some inferior animal than there is to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage.
~ William Jennings Bryan, Testimony at the Scopes trial (16 July 1925).

Believing hath a core of unbelieving.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan, from The Book of Orm (1870). V. Songs of Seeking, XII

He considered that immortality was the only goal worth striving for. He knew it was not something you automatically get for believing in some arbitrary dogma like Christianity or Islam. It is something you have to work and fight for, like everything else in life.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands (1987).

If they who wear the chains of creeds once knew the happiness of breathing the air of freedom, and of moving with an unincumbered spirit, no wealth or power in the world's gift would bribe them to part with their spiritual liberty.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), in Tracts of American Unitarian Association (September 1837). Extracts From A Letter On Creeds.

[I]f I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous.
~ William Kingdon (W.K.) Clifford, in Contemporary Review (1877). The Ethics of Belief, I. The Duty Of Inquiry

Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves but for humanity.
~ William Kingdon (W.K.) Clifford, in Contemporary Review (1877). The Ethics of Belief, I. The Duty Of Inquiry

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
~ William Kingdon (W.K.) Clifford, in Contemporary Review (1877). The Ethics of Belief, I. The Duty Of Inquiry

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.
~ William Kingdon (W.K.) Clifford, in Contemporary Review (1877). The Ethics of Belief, I. The Duty Of Inquiry

While the [Christian] faith takes care of the ultimate incongruities of life, humor does nicely with the intermediate ones.
~ Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Living the Truth in a World of Illusions (1985).

I don't believe in angels, no. . . . But I do have a wee parking angel. It's on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it's supposed to give you a parking space. It's worked so far.
~ Billy Connolly, Quoted in Ananova Ltd (13 August 2001). Connolly says he doesn't believe in angels

Balderdash. I said balderdash. Piffle. Rubbish. Tosh and gibberish. Also twaddle, trash, fudge, flapdoodle, drivel and flummery. I wrote it [an astrological prediction], so I ought to know. But just because I've put this verbiage in print somebody will believe it.
~ Sir William Connor (Cassandra)

Set free from present sorrow,
We cheerfully can say,
E'en let the unknown to-morrow
Bring with it what it may.
~ William Cowper, from Olney Hymns (1779). Book III: On the Rise, Progress, Changes, and Comforts of the Spiritual Life. Joy and Peace in Believing

Generous souls are still most subject to credulity.
~ Sir William Davenant

As you live, believe in Life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the Great End comes slowly, because time is long.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (Last message, written 26 June 1957).

If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth they have not often let their presence be known.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk (1924). Chapter 9

I cannot reconcile the existence of consciousness with a deterministic and mechanistic philososphy. I am skeptical not only of theology but also of philosophy, science, history, and myself. I recognize supersensory possibilities but not supernatural powers.
~ William James "Will" Durant, Will and Ariel Durant: A Dual Autobiography (1977).

Religions are born and may die, but superstition is immortal.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Age of Reason Begins (1961).

Religious doctrines were determined not by the logic of a few but by the needs of the many; they were a frame of belief within which the common man, inclined by nature to a hundred unsocial actions, could be formed into a being sufficiently disciplined and self-controlled to make society and civilization possible.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume VI (1957). The Reformation

It's often a good idea to let the other fellow believe he is running things whether he is or not.
~ William Feather

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink.
~ W.C. Fields

Prayers never bring anything. . . . They may bring solace to the sap, the bigot, the ignorant, the aboriginal and the lazy -- but to the enlightened it is the same as asking Santa Claus to bring you something for Xmas.
~ W.C. Fields

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.
~ John William Gardner, The aims of a Free People, Excellence

The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
~ John William Gardner

I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.
~ Bill Gates

Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, (19 September 1877).

I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right.
~ Billy Graham

Some believe strongly that each Christian may have his own guardian angel assigned to watch over him or her.
~ Billy Graham, in Word, Inc. ANGELS, by Billy Graham (1975), Hills Full of Horses

Spiritism, Eastern mysticism, reincarnation, and countless other occult beliefs offer seductive answers which remove the fear of death but at the expense of denying God's truth.
~ Billy Graham

How loth were we to give up our pious belief in ghosts and witches, because we liked to persecute the one, and frighten ourselves to death with the other!
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker (1826). On the Pleasure of Hating

Ever noticed how creationists look really unevolved?
~ Bill Hicks, Independent on Sunday (1994).

It is becoming impossible for those who mix with their fellowmen to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
~ William James, An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities (published in the New World; June 1896). The Will to Believe

Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
~ William James

Belief creates the actual fact.
~ William James

Believe, and you shall be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall perish. The only difference is that to believe is greatly to your advantage.
~ William James, in Princeton Review (1882). The Sentiment of Rationality

Believe in the infinite as common people do, and life grows possible again.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). The Divided Self, And The Process Of Its Unification

But who does not see that in a disbelieved or doubted or interrogative or conditional proposition, the ideas are combined in the same identical way in which they are in a proposition which is solidly believed.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890).

[I] believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.
~ William James, Letter to Carl Stumpf (1886).

Immortality is but a way of saying that the determination of expectancy is the essential factor of rationality.
~ William James, in Princeton Review (July 1883).

Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
~ William James

The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.
~ William James, An Address to the Harvard Divinity Students (1884). The Dilemma of Determinism

The drift of all the evidence we have seems to me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be co-conscious.
~ William James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909).

There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough people will believe it.
~ William James

[W]e have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will.
~ William James, An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities (published in the New World; June 1896). The Will to Believe

But I don't want some pretty face
To tell me pretty lies
All I want is someone to believe.
~ Billy Joel, in 52nd Street (1980 album). Honesty

What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.
~ Billy Joel, in The Stranger (1977 album). Just the Way You Are

Your father believed in one thing. I believe in another. You believe in something else. But it doesn't matter a tuppenny damn what one believes in, so long as it's worth believing in. It's faith, sonny, that does it. Faith and purpose.
~ William John Locke, The Fortunate Youth (1914).

So one must believe without doubting
That these are apparent miracles
That Music has made.
It's certainly true.
~ Guillaume de Machaut, Ode à la Musique (c. 1372).

Too many of our prejudices are like pyramids upside down. They rest on tiny, trivial incidents, but they spread upward and outward until they fill our minds.
~ William McChesney Martin

Nothing is more irritating to the modern than this dogma of the supernatural, a dogma that cannot . . . be demonstrated by human reason; it requires God's revelation to bring to our knowledge this fact that man is supernaturalized.
~ William J. McGucken, The Philosophy of Catholic Education (1951).

Unless this fact of the "Fall of Man" -- or, if you will, the dogma of original sin -- be admitted, Christianity simply collapses like a pricked balloon. . . . For without the Fall, there would be no need of the Incarnation and Redemption, the two cardinal points of Christian belief.
~ William J. McGucken, The Philosophy of Catholic Education (1951).

No actual skeptic, so far as I know, has claimed to disbelieve in an objective world. Skepticism is not a denial of belief, but rather a denial of rational grounds for belief.
~ William Pepperell (W.P.) Montague, in Philosophy (1937). The Story of American Realism

An agreeable opinion is accepted as true: this is the proof by pleasure (or, as the church says, the proof by strength), that all religions are so proud of, whereas they ought to be ashamed. If the belief did not make us happy, it would not be believed: how little must it then be worth!
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878).

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1888).

Every tradition grows ever more venerable -- the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878).

If you believed more in life you would fling yourself less to the moment.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Our most sacred convictions, the unchanging elements of our supreme values, are judgements of our muscles.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power (1901).

Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared -- this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. Second Sequel: The Wanderer and His Shadow (December 1879).

Americans will respect your beliefs if you just keep them private. Keep it private.
~ Bill O'Reilly, Comedy Central (15 March 2002). The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Conservatism and old fogeyism are totally different things; the motto of one is "Prove all things and hold fast that which is good" and of the other "Prove nothing but hold fast that which is old."
~ William Osler

My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.
~ Wilma Rudolph

All knowledge must be built on our intuitive beliefs; if they are rejected, nothing is left.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (1912).

Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted the human race.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, from Sceptical Essays (1928). Dreams and Facts

Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (1912). Chapter V: Knowledge By Acquaintance And Knowledge By Description

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather then by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless and will therefore result to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education".
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must of course admit that if such an opinion became common, it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, The Will To Doubt (1958). On the Value of Scepticism

Let your conscious beliefs be so vivid and emphatic that they make an impression upon your unconscious and be strong enough to cope with the impressions made by your nurse or your mother when you were an infant.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930). The Sense of Sin

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, from Unpopular Essays (1950). VII: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish

Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God, and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, in The Listener, 37 (29 May 1947). The Faith of a Rationalist

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, from Unpopular Essays (1950). VII: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish

To die for one's beliefs is to put too high a price on conjecture.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, Quoted in The Penguin Dictionary of Twentieth-century Quotations (1993).

Blaming the Victim . . . is central in the mainstream of contemporary American social thought, and its ideas pervade our most crucial assumptions so thoroughly that they are hardly noticed. Moreover, the fruits of this ideology appear to be fraught with altruism and humanitarianism, so it is hard to believe that it has principally functioned to block social change.
~ William Ryan, Blaming the Victim (1971).

Various types of belief can be implanted in many people, after brain function has been sufficiently disturbed by accidentally or deliberately induced fear, anger or excitement. Of the results caused by such disturbances, the most common one is temporarily impaired judgment and heightened suggestibility. Its various group manifestations are sometimes classed under the heading of "herd instinct," and appear most spectacularly in wartime, during severe epidemics, and in all similar periods of common danger, which increase anxiety and so individual and mass suggestibility.
~ William Sargant, The Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing (1957).

As I open myself to questions being posed by those from other systems, I gain perspective on how many of my beliefs are system based.
~ Anne Wilson Schaef, Native Wisdom for White Minds (1995).

A prosperous gentleman; and to be king
Stands not within the prospect of belief.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act I, scene iii

I hold you as a thing enskyed and sainted.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Now I will believe that there are unicorns.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnet 138

Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
~ William Shenstone

Even the upper end of the river
believes in the ocean.
~ William Stafford, The Way It Is (1993). Climbing Along The River

Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes the other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn.
~ William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1906).

If we believe the Scripture, we must allow that God Almighty esteemed the life of a man in a garden -- the happiest he could give him, or else he would not have placed Adam in that of Eden; that it was the state of innocence and pleasure; and that the life of husbandry and cities came after the fall, with guilt and with labour.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet, from Miscellanea, Part II (1690). Upon The Gardens of Epicurus: or, Of Gardening, in the Year 1685

There is only one divine light, and every man is in his measure enlightened by it.
~ William Temple, Readings in St. John's Gospel. Volume 1 (1939)

What we believe about God is the most important thing about us.
~ Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer

You have to believe in yourself. And you have to, down deep within the bottom of your soul, feel that you can do the job that you have set out to do.
~ William Castle de Vries

Face what you think you believe and you will be surprised.
~ William Hale White

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.
~ Billy Wilder

When lies are repeated often enough, even wise men begin to accept them.
~ Ben Ames Williams, House Divided (1947).

It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time, especially when that belief refers not to the objective fact but to subjective interpretation.
~ Charles Walter Stansby Williams, in What the Cross Means to Me: A Theological Symposium (1943 essay)

I've always remained positive. When you believe in God as I do and my son does, you know he will come back home safely.
~ David C. Williams (on the rescue of former POW David S. Williams), The Associated Press (Telephone interview; 14 April 2003).

The strength of Hinduism lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human character and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosopher, its practical to the man of the world, its aesthetic and ceremonial side attuned to the man of the poetic feeling and imagination; and its quiescent contemplative aspect that has its appeal for the man of peace and the lover of seclusion.
~ Sir Monier-Williams

Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams

My own creed as a playwright is fairly close to that expressed by the painter in Shaw's play The Doctor's Dilemma, "I believe in Michelangelo, Velásquez and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by beauty everlasting and the message of art that has made these hands blessed. Amen."
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams

I made a terrible error in judgment, and I know I'll have to pay for it as long as I live. But I am not a lesbian and I am not a slut, and somehow I am going to make people believe me.
~ Vanessa Williams, (July 1984).

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.
~ Edmund Wilson, from Memoirs of Hecate County (1946).

The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful drive in the human mind, an innate and possibly irreplaceable part of human nature.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, in Free Inquiry magazine. Spring 1987, Volume 7 Number 2. Biology's Spiritual Products

I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.)
~ Robert Anton Wilson, in OMNI's Prime Time Live (Interview; 16 September 1997). High Strangeness

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
~ Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger, Vol. I (1986).

[O]ld beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
~ Edward Osborne (E.O.) Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998).

I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe it is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swing his lantern higher.
~ William Butler Yeats

It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what the feeling is.
~ William Butler Yeats

What do you think of when alone at night?
Do not the things your mothers spoke about,
Before they took the candle from the bedside,
Rush up into the mind and master it,
Till you believe in them against your will?
~ William Butler Yeats, The Hour-Glass (1912 version).