Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche; Human; All Too Human; 1878


Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity; never the correctness; of a belief. ~Arthur Schweitzer; Out of My Life and Thought; 1932


Man tends to treat all his opinions as principles. ~Herbert Agar


When I believe in nothing I do not want to meet you when you believe in nothing. ~Antonio Porchia; Voces; 1943; translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


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


What matters is not the idea a man holds; but the depth at which he holds it. ~Ezra Pound


It is easier to believe than to doubt. ~E.D. Martin; The Meaning of a Liberal Education


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 the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes; Sr.; The Poet at the Breakfast Table; 1872


Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right. ~Laurens van der Post


This is how humans are:? we question all our beliefs; except for the ones we really believe; and those we never think to question. ~Orson Scott Card


He who does not know how to believe; should not know. ~Antonio Porchia; Voces; 1943; translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker; but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


He does not believe who does not live according to his belief. ~Thomas Fuller


Some things have to be believed to be seen. ~Ralph Hodgson; The Skylark and Other Poems


Generally the theories we believe we call facts; and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. ~Felix Cohen


Not... what opinions are held; but... how they are held:? instead of being held dogmatically; [liberal] opinions are held tentatively; and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. ~Bertrand Russell; Unpopular Essays; 1950


Few really believe. The most only believe that they believe or even make believe. ~John Lancaster Spalding


Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little. ~Antonio Porchia; Voces; 1943; translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment. ~Seneca


Men never do evil so thoroughly and cheerfully as when they do it for conscience sake. ~Blaise Pascal; Pens?es; 1670