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Quotations about belief

What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us-what convictions, what courage, what faith-win or lose. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principal can.

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. (1900 - 1965), Welcoming address before the Democratic national convention, Chicago, Illinois, July 21, 1952

Man is what he believes.

Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904)

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

Edith Sitwell (1887 - 1964)

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1869 - 1959)

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

Gerry Spence, 'How to Argue and Win Every Time'

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.

John Lilly

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC), De Bello Gallico

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.

Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988), misquoting Sir Walter Scott

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.

Leo Rosten (1908 - )

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898), Alice in Wonderland

They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.

Louise Erdrich

Remember that what you believe will depend very much on what you are.

Noah Porter (1811 - 1892)

I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Ralph Hodgson, on ESP

Unless you believe, you will not understand.

Saint Augustine (354 AD - 430 AD), De Libero Arbitrio

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgement.

Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD), 4 BC-65 AD

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.