The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.
Believe - Belief Quotes
I am convinced that if a dozen skeptics were to draw up in parallel columns a list of the events narrated in the gospels, which they consider credible, and incredible respectively, their lists would be different in several particulars. Belief is literally a matter of taste.
We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.
There is nothing men more readily give themselves to than pushing their own beliefs. When ordinary means fail, they add commandment, violence, fire and sword.
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
I am the clutch of an idea, and the reasoned purpose of resolution. I am no more than you believe me to be and I am all that you can believe I can be. I am whatever you make me, nothing more.
We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears, which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.
The precise moment at which a great belief is doomed is easily recognizable; it is the moment when its value begins to be called into question.
