Quotes about belief

The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do.

— James Allen

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults --a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

It doesn't matter how many say it cannot be done or how many people have tried it before; it's important to realize that whatever you're doing, it's your first attempt at it.

— Wally Amos

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

— Dr. Robert Anthony

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

— St. Augustine

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.

— Richard Bach

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.

— Walter Bagehot

I started out by believing God for a newer car than the one I was driving. I started out believing God for a nicer apartment than I had. Then I moved up.

— Jim Bakker

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

— James Baldwin

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

— James Baldwin

Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

— Joel A. Barker

More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.

— P.T. Barnum

Every time a child says, I don't believe in fairies, there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

— Sir James M. Barrie

Once you begin to believe there is help out there, you will know it to be true.

— Saint Bartholomew

The essential element in personal magnetism is a consuming sincerity -- an overwhelming faith in the importance of the work one has to do.

— Bruce Barton

Everything is possible for him who believes.

— Bible

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.

— Shirley Temple Black

Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.

— Ludwig Borne

Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking and believing. As individuals think and believe, so they are.

— Claude M. Bristol

Believe that you possess a basic goodness, which is the foundation for the greatness you can ultimately achieve.

— Les Brown

Your level of belief in yourself will inevitably manifest itself in whatever you do.

— Les Brown

If one age believes too much it is natural that another believes too little.

— George Earle Buckle

Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings -- that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.

— Buddha

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.

— Warren Buffett

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

— John Burroughs

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

— Samuel Butler

All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise.

— Lord Byron

Men freely believe that which they desire.

— Julius Caesar

Men willingly believe what they wish.

— Julius Caesar

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

— Julius Caesar

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

— Cannon's Law

We are what we believe we are

— Benjamin N. Cardozo

You've got to be success minded. You've got to feel that things are coming your way when you're out selling; otherwise, you won't be able to sell anything.

— Curtis Carlson

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

— Thomas Carlyle

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

— Thomas Carlyle

The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against unbelief.

— Thomas Carlyle

The most fearful unbelief is unbelief in your self.

— Thomas Carlyle

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

— Lewis Carroll

One can't believe impossible things. I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

— Lewis Carroll

As a first approximation, I define belief not as the object of believing (a dogma, a program, etc.) but as the subject's investment in a proposition, the act of saying it and considering it as true.

— Michel De Certeau

We have only to believe. And the more threatening and irreducible reality appears, the more firmly and desperately we must believe. Then, little by little, we shall see the universal horror unbend, and then smile upon us, and then take us in its more than human arms.

— Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.

— Lord Chesterfield

Acquire the courage to believe in yourself. Many of the things that you have been taught were at one time the radical ideas of individuals who had the courage to believe what their own hearts and minds told them was true, rather than accept the common beliefs of their day.

— Ching Ning Chu

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

— Charles Caleb Colton

If a horse has four legs, and I'm riding it, I think I can win.

— Angel Cordero Jr.

Drugs are not always necessary, but belief in recovery always is.

— Norman Cousins

Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

— Dinah Mulock Craik

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

— Demosthenes

The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.

— Richard M. DeVos

The abdication of belief makes the behavior small -- better an ignis fatuus than no illume at all.

— Emily Dickinson

I don't think anything is unrealistic if you believe you can do it.

— Mike Ditka

You are always a valuable, worthwhile human being -- not because anybody says so, not because you're successful, not because you make a lot of money -- but because you decide to believe it and for no other reason.

— Wayne Dyer

You'll see it when you believe it.

— Wayne Dyer

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

— George Eliot

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

All the great ages have been ages of belief.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

— Epictetus

Everybody keeps telling me how surprised they are with what I've done. But I'm telling you honestly that it doesn't surprise me. I knew I could do it.

— Patrick Ewing

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

— Henry Ford

I am a winner each and every time I go into the ring.

— George Foreman

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

— Anatole France

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.

— Sigmund Freud

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.

— James A. Froude

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief .

— Thomas Fuller

A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.

— Lynwood L. Giacomini

Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.

— Frank Gifford

He is dead in this world who has no belief in another.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Oh how sweet it is to hear one's own convictions from another's lips.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

— Foka Gomez

Believing: it means believing in our own lies. And I can say that I am grateful that I got this lesson very early.

— Gunther Grass

People give us credit only for what we ourselves believe.

— Gutzkow

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

— David Hare

To a very large extent men and women are a product of how they define themselves. As a result of a combination of innate ideas and the intimate influences of the culture and environment we grow up in, we come to have beliefs about the nature of being human. These beliefs penetrate to a very deep level of our psychosomatic systems, our minds and brains, our nervous systems, our endocrine systems, and even our blood and sinews. We act, speak, and think according to these deeply held beliefs and belief systems.

— Jeremy W. Hayward

Belief gets in the way of learning.

— Robert Heinlein

It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

— Lillian Hellman

What ever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

— Napoleon Hill

Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.

— H. A. Hodges

You must see first before you can believe.

— Raymond Holliwell

Loving is half of believing.

— Victor Hugo

Belief creates the actual fact.

— William James

Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

— William James

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

— William James

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

— Gerald G. Jampolsky

As I get older I seem to believe less and less and yet to believe what I do believe more and more.

— David Jenkins

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

— Samuel Johnson

The word belief is a difficult thing for me. I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it --I don't need to believe it.

— Carl Jung

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.

— Franz Kafka

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

— Nikos Kazantzakis

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.

— Søren Kierkegaard

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

— Michael Korda

There seems to be a great misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.

— Louis Kronenberger

Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.

— Jean De La Fontaine

If you don't believe in yourself, then who will believe in you? The next man's way of getting there might not necessarily work for me, so I have to create my own ways of getting there.

— Martin Lawrence

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

With the majority of people unbelief in one thing is founded on the blind belief in another.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Whatever one believes to be true either is true or becomes true in one's mind.

— John C. Lilly