Isak Dinesen Quotes

He that believes all misseth; he that believes nothing, hits not.

Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.

As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.

What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything.

Faith does not mean credulity...

I do not believe in Belief.

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little.

A man of good sense always believes what he is told, and what he finds written down.

He who knows all things and believes nothing is damned.

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

It is easier to believe than to doubt.

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.

Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.

In the affairs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by want of it.

I am willing to believe, but I do not have the gift of faith. I'm skeptical.

We are responsible for our incredulity.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

It is equally a fault to believe all men or to believe none.

It was the schoolboy who said, ""Faith is believing what you know ain't so.""

GIVE ME YOUR REASON TO BELIeVE

I don't believe anything till I have seen the proof. For anything without proof, I think we should believe the theory that gives us peace. It doesn't matter whether the theory is true or not.

If I wanted to doubt, then I could doubt endlessly, but at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in.

I don't discount belief. I just discount most of the things that people believe in.