Belief Systems Quotes

When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color--something which exists before all forms and colors appear... No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.

It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.

Next time someone tells me they believe in God, I'll say 'Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?...' If they say 'Just God. I only believe in the one God,' I'll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don't believe in 2,870 gods, and they don't believe in 2,869.

I grew up Jewish. I am Jewish. I went to an Episcopal high school. I went to a Baptist college. I've taken every comparative-religion course that was available. God? I have no idea.

I regard morality and ideology as the chief cause of human misery.

There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

I am not an atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.

I grew up Catholic, and when you've grown up, and these belief systems have been presented to you at a young, impressionable age, I don't know that you can shake them. Even if your rational mind tells you something else, sometimes they're so deeply ingrained that they are with you for the rest of your life.

My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.

Faith is harder to shake than knowledge, love succumbs less to change than respect, hate is more enduring than aversion, and the impetus to the mightiest upheavals on this earth has at all times consisted less in a scientific knowledge dominating the masses than in a fanaticism which inspired them and sometimes in a hysteria which drove them forward.

I haven't been baptised. My dad's not in the church and is not a religious person. My mum is more spiritual - she does Thai-chi and goes to Stonehenge and things like that. I'm proud to be pagan. Finland is not really a religious country. I'm still looking for my god.

An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.

For a while, I thought of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief, too. It's a shame everything has to have a label.

I don't want to act like the witch trials all over New England were warranted, but when you live in a culture that believes something is real, it feels very real.

I still can't decide which is silliest; a person believing in a God who 'isn't there,' or a person offended by a God whom he doesn't believe exists.

I'd describe myself as a Christian who doesn't believe in God.

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.

If you raise your standards but don't really believe you can meet them, you've already sabotaged yourself. You won't even try; you'll be lacking the sense of certainty that allows you to tap the deepest capacity that's within you... Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what's possible and impossible and what we can and can not do. They shape every action, every thought and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief systems is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives.

I am not the opposite of theism. I am right in the middle of those non-believers and believers. It's not even about being agnostic or nastik. Why would I take a name given to me by my opposition? I am just a rationalist.

Human beings will believe in all kinds of things that aren't true, and that's okay. And TV is a part of that.

I think, living in America, we're so bombarded with God all the time that in certain ways I'm making statements against that bombardment, you know? I think it's crazy. I mean, I don't believe in God. I don't believe in anything. But I still think about it. And I still write about it.

We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions.