Blind Conviction Quotes

Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven.

People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.

Even the weakest disputant is made so conceited by what he calls religion, as to think himself wiser than the wisest who think differently from him.

There is nothing more dangerous than a person with only one right answer.

There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposed to rob us of their companionship.

Certitude drives people mad.

. . . the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.

An obstinate person does not hold opinions; they hold them.

I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.

Every fool stands convinced; and everyone convinced is a fool. The faultier a person's judgement the firmer their convictions.

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.

There is nothing more dangerous than an idea, when it is held by a man who has only one.

The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His.

The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

We pity or condemn the communist peoples of the world for being bound in the chains of doctrine. So are we. Our doctrine runs as follows: Our Way is the Only Way.

The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and insolence.

There is nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.

… contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism in itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.

One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence

The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.

Is there anything more dangerous than an ideologue who doesn't know he's wrong?

Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.

Young people are so infernally convinced that they are absolutely right about everything.