Quotes · Skopia

15 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Beliefs✕clear

Psychological literature

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

The Varieties of Religious Experience · 1902

★ 1.0

How long will the human race sweat under the superstition that, in order to be happy and useful and intelligent, it is necessary to believe in things? What nonsense indeed! Human progress consists, not in acquiring beliefs, but in getting rid of them.

1921

★ 1.8

Philosophical literature

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

1605

★ 1.9

Philosophical literature

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding · 1748

★ 2.2

Novel · Dystopian fiction

DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.2

In the end, belief and the lack of it amount to the same thing. If someone were to prove to me-right this minute-that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior.

1982

★ 2.5

Essay · Philosophical literature

It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

1877

★ 3.5

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

The Will to Believe · 1896

★ 3.6

Essay · Philosophical literature

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

Bertrand Russell

1928

★ 3.6

Essay · Philosophical literature

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Bertrand Russell

1950

★ 3.6

Essay · Philosophical literature

Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human · 1878

★ 4.0

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

Marriage and Morals · 1929

★ 4.4

Essay · Philosophical literature

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

Bertrand Russell

On the Value of Scepticism · 1928

★ 5.2

Autobiography and memoir · Autobiography and memoir

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain · 1910

★ 5.5