Saint Augustine Quotes

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.

My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me.

It isn't what people think that is important, but the reason they think what they think.

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

Be skeptical, but not as a social position, not claiming to be so intelligent that you cannot believe what other people say. It's not about being right and making everybody else wrong. No, you are skeptical because you know without a doubt that everybody lives in their own story, and in their story they have their own truth. But it's only truth in their mind, just as your truth is only truth in your mind, and nobody else's.

Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.

He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.

I've gone through most of my life not believing anything. Either I know or I don't know, or I think.

A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Writing keeps me from believing everything I read.

Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

Why understand when you can believe?

I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

People are stupid... They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid it might be true.

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence.

I would recommend that skeptics devote even more effort than they do now to understanding the reasons why so many people want or need to believe.

Why do I want to believe what I believe?... Science, to put it somewhat vulgarly, is a technique to keep yourself from kidding yourself.

I don't travel in circles where people say, 'I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.' That's just a long-winded religious way to say 'Shut up.'

He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.