119 Beliefs And Quotes

In our quest for understanding and inspiration, quotes often serve as powerful beacons of wisdom. We gravitate towards words that resonate with our beliefs, fuel our aspirations, and offer comfort in times of uncertainty. This carefully curated collection of the top 119 beliefs and quotes is designed to uplift your spirit and ignite your inner strength. Whether you're seeking motivation, solace, or a gentle reminder of life’s beauty, these quotes encapsulate a range of profound thoughts and timeless truths that can guide you on your journey. Dive in and let these insightful words inspire and illuminate your path.

1. “My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” - Bertrand Russell

2. “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” - Mark Twain

3. “Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, and so they give their lives to little or nothing. One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it…and then it’s gone.But to surrender who you are and to live without belief is more terrible than dying – even more terrible than dying young.” - Joan of Arc

4. “You can never be really sure of how much you believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life or death to you.” - C.S. Lewis

5. “Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.” - Albert Camus

6. “People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.” - Blaise Pascal

7. “I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.” - Adlai E. Stevenson II

8. “All religions lead to the same God, and all deserve the same respect. Anyone who chooses a religion is also choosing a collective way for worshipping and sharing the mysteries. Nevertheless, that person is the only one responsible for his or her actions along the way and has no right to shift responsibility for any personal decisions on to that religion.” - Paulo Coelho

9. “There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the far-fetched, and those who believe that 'belief' must be discarded and replaced by the 'scientific method.' Between these two extremes there is enough scope for believing the reasonable and reasoning on sound beliefs.” - Max Born

10. “I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it. Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in.” - Ernst Jünger

11. “Doubt everything. Find your own light.” - Gautama Buddha

12. “Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.” - Ronald Reagan

13. “Los científicos e individuos de finales del siglo veinte son altamente creyentes, tanto como los científicos de antaño, lo único que ha cambiado es el objeto de su fe, los tradicionales creían en principios universales que regían el cosmos visible e invisible, enseñanzas y técnicas trasmitidas de generación en generación por hombres que se dedicaban a la concentración, la meditación y el estudio, que vivían en el bosque o en monasterios y templos apartados del dinero y del ruido. Los científicos actuales creen con la misma intensidad que sus antepasados, pero no en esos principios metafísicos y universales que les parecen supercherías, sino en el poder de medicaciones químicas, aunque se retiren años después; en el poder de protección de vacunas y antibióticos... en el poder del dinero para crear la realidad más falsa de todas por definición... y en definitiva en el Sistema que es quien les ha creado, quien les mantiene y el que un día les fagocitará.” - Dr. Enrique Costa Vercher

14. “God’s word is not just to be heard and repeated, it is to be breathed, lived, and emulated with each action.” - Steve Maraboli

15. “It is a better world. A place where we ate responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and becauseit is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” - Christopher Paolini

16. “Not everything that can be counted counts.Not everything that counts can be counted.” - William Bruce Cameron

17. “Total Enlightenment is 'Vision without Purpose'.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

18. “I'm not out to disturb anybody's faith. I happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that has a dual deity and operates on a lunar schedule. It suits my needs. If you happen to be happy and comfortable with a belief system that features a single masculine deity and operates on a solar schedule, fine. I don't give a fat damn. What matters is what you do, not who's name you do it in.” - Mercedes Lackey

19. “Religious people of any serious kind made her nervous: they were like men in raincoats who might or might not be flashers.” - Margaret Atwood

20. “If you don't believe in the things you're doing, the answer isn't fooling yourself into thinking you believe it. If you don't believe in what you're doing, then you just shouldn't be doing it.” - Jason Myers

21. “If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?” - William Somerset Maugham

22. “The most formidable chains are forged from beliefs. Ah, beliefs! Beliefs tear out the eyes and leave us blind and groping in the dark. If I believe in one proposition, I have become locked behind the door of that belief, and all other doors to learning and freedom, although standing open and waiting for me to enter, are now closed to me. If I believe in one God, one religion, yes, if I believe in God at all, if I have closed my mind to magic, to spirit, to salvation, to the unknown dimension that exist in the firmament, I have plunged my mind into slavery. Test all beliefs. Distrust all beliefs.” - Gerry Spence

23. “When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.” - Michael Ende

24. “It's one of the great temptations, you see--wanting to prove the strength of your own faith by making others believe what you believe. It shows you're right. But it doesn't prove anything of the sort. All it proves is that you're condescending and arrogant and good at doing what half-decent actors can do, or advertising agents, or pop stars, or politicians, or con men, or any of the professional persuaders. They sell illusions. And that's all they do. And they feel good when they succeed. That's what their lives depend on. Which isn't true about religion. Or shouldn't be. Your belief shouldn't depend on what other people think about it. And it certainly should not depend on whether other people believe the same as you.” - Aidan Chambers

25. “At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.” - Paul Graham

26. “I had a standing agreement with god. I'd agree to believe in him, barely, so long as he let me sleep in on Sundays.” - Richelle Mead

27. “I also learned that a person was not necessarily bad just because you did not agree with him, and that if you believed in something, you had better be prepared to defend it.” - Hillary Clinton

28. “Yet rather than calling the earliest religions, which embraced such an open acceptance of all human sexuality, 'fertility cults,' we might consider the religions of today as strange in that they seem to associate shame and even sin with the very process of conceiving new human life. Perhaps centuries from now scholars and historians will be classifying them as 'sterility cults.” - Merlin Stone

29. “If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations in the world the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably—after careful considerations of their relative merits—choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best.” - Herodotus

30. “Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence.But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence.And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe?Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?” - Alan Sokal

31. “People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.” - Carl Sagan

32. “So the question becomes, If you are ever faced with this choice are you willing to die for what you believe in? For that is the only way you will deny him. [...] It's a difficult question and not one you can answer until you're faced with it. Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.” - Christopher Paolini

33. “The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on a par with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old.” - Hendrik Hertzberg

34. “However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end be internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy. All societies have had work at their centre; ours is the first to suggest that it could be something more than a punishment or a penance. Ours is the first to imply that we should seek to work even in the absence of a financial imperative.” - Alain De Botton

35. “It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.Ignorance is our deepest secret.And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.Here is a quick test:If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.It will do both of you good.” - Vera Nazarian

36. “Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.” - Philip Zimbardo

37. “Image is only temporal. Substance endures. Who said, "Image is everything"? And who believed it?” - T.F. Hodge

38. “Depression is partly a nocebo effect, in the sense that it can be produced by negative exceptions about oneself and the world. The way in which these negative expectations develop and produce their negative effects provides some clues as to how they can be reversed. Expectancy effects grow, feeding upon themselves. One reason this happens is that our subjective states - our feelings, our moods and sensations - are in constant flux, changing from day to day and from moment to moment. The effects of these fluctuations depend on how we interpret them, and our interpretations depend on our beliefs and expectations. When we expect to feel worse, we tend to notice random small negative changes and interpret them as evidence that we are in fact getting worse. This interpretation makes us actually feel worse, and it strengthens the belief that we are getting worse, leading to a vicious cycle in which our expectations and negative emotions feed on each other, cascading into a full-blown depressive episode. .. Positive expectancies have the opposite effect. They can set in motion a begin cycle, in which random fluctuations in mood and well being are interpreted as evidence of treatment effectiveness, thereby instilling a further sense of hope and countering the feeling of hopelessness that are so central to clinical depression.” - Irving Kirsch

39. “It is more substantial to represent a purpose, rather than just a title.” - T.F. Hodge

40. “It would be difficult to convince me that leaning has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of my bowling.” - Amy Krouse Rosenthal

41. “I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.” - Andy Rooney

42. “We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.” - Andy Rooney

43. “I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis.” - Criss Jami

44. “Senses of humor define people, as factions, deeper rooted than religious or political opinions. When carrying out everyday tasks, opinions are rather easy to set aside, but those whom a person shares a sense of humor with are his closest friends. They are always there to make the biggest influence.” - Criss Jami

45. “The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.” - Criss Jami

46. “...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear” - Lauren Oliver

47. “Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as "fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales." And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day "advancements" we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question "Who designated myths and legends as unreality? " But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors "You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things" and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.” - C. JoyBell C.

48. “Humanity does not suffer from the disease of wrong beliefs but humanity suffers from the contagious nature of the lack of belief. If you have no magic with you it is not because magic does not exist but it is because you do not believe in it. Even if the sun shines brightly upon your skin every day, if you do not believe in the sunlight, the sunlight for you does not exist.” - C. JoyBell C.

49. “... researchers argue that it's of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be tested experimentally. Come to think of it, many still do in twenty-first-century society.” - Eric Chaisson

50. “Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.” - Donella H. Meadows

51. “Don't entrust your future on others' hands. Rather make decisions by yourself with the help of God's guidance. Hold your beliefs so tight and never let go of them!” - Hark Herald Sarmiento

52. “I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.” - Neil Gaiman

53. “[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!" My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!” - Christine de Pizan

54. “I think honesty is the most heroic quality one can aspire to.” - Daniel Radcliffe

55. “Its impossible to initiate a rational dialogue with some one about beliefs and concepts if he has not acquired them through reason. It doesn't matter whether we are looking at God, race, or national pride.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

56. “Elder mocked me for praying once, and i spent an hour berating him for that. He ended up throwing up his hands, laughing, and telling me i could believe whatever i wanted if i was going to hold onto my beliefs so hard.” - Beth Revis

57. “[Men] prefer the foolish belief and the passions of the earth [to the enlightenment of their souls]. They believe the absurd and shrink from the truth.""No, they do not. They are afraid, that is all. And they must remain on earth until they come to the way of leaving it.""And how do they leave? How is the ascent made? Must one learn virtue?"Here she laughs. "You have read too much, and learned too little. Virtue is a road, not a destination. Man cannot be virtuous. Understanding is the goal. When that is achieved, the soul can take wing.” - Iain Pears

58. “I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck... I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” - Neil Gaiman

59. “What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.” - Russell Banks

60. “No," I said simply. "I hate no one. I want only to be left in peace to understand the mysteries of the universe in my own way.” - S.J. Parris

61. “I may not be sure if monsters exist, but I’d rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.” - Gregory Maguire

62. “If your body is screaming in pain, whether the pain is muscular contractions, anxiety, depression, asthma or arthritis, a first step in releasing the pain may be making the connection between your body pain and the cause. “Beliefs are physical. A thought held long enough and repeated enough becomes a belief. The belief then becomes biology.” - Marilyn Van M. Derbur

63. “To feel more fulfilled your actions and activities need to be in alignment with what you deem important.” - Deborah Day

64. “Rewriting the negative beliefs you have learned is the essence of becoming the director of your life.” - Deborah Day

65. “Your choice is to be active or passive in your responses.” - Deborah Day

66. “Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

67. “If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.” - Thomas Paine

68. “There is no need for us all to be alike and think the same way, neither do we need a common enemy to force us to come together and reach out to each other. If we allow ourselves and everyone else the freedom to fully individuate as spiritual beings in human form, there will be no need for us to be forced by worldly circumstances to take hands and stand together. Our souls will automatically want to flock together, like moths to the flame of our shared Divinity, yet each with wings covered in the glimmering colors and unique patterns of our individual human expression.” - Anthon St. Maarten

69. “As Christians it is not just for us to know what we believe, but why we believe it".~R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods

70. “Co-opted convictions will always betray you.” - Charles M. Blow

71. “Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: 'My worth is my sexuality. I'm dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries.' That shapes their ideas about the world around them: 'No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can't be trusted.' It doesn't take long for children to being to act in accordance with these belief systems.For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant.” - Rachel Lloyd

72. “Since art is a virtue of the intellect, it demands to communicate with the entire universe of the intellect. Hence it is that the normal climate of art is intelligence and knowledge: its normal soil, the civilized heritage of a consistent and integrated system of beliefs and values; its normal horizon , the infinity of human experience enlighted by the passionate insight of anguish or the intellectual virtues of a contemplative mind.” - Jacques Maritain

73. “There was no need for a term like ‘magical thinking’ in the Golden Age of Man...there was only genuine everyday magic and mysticism. Children were not mocked or scolded in those days for singing to the rain or talking to the wind.” - Anthon St. Maarten

74. “In part. She sat down and pulled her necklace out of her shirt. "I read about it in my mother's journal. The Witches believe we are all parts of a whole. Like the phases of the moon. Together, we complete the circle and bring balance.” - Amber Argyle

75. “He keeps his deepest belief tight to him: that people are good and want to be good, if only you give them a chance.” - Lauren Groff

76. “Yo no sé nada de Dios (...), pero sí sé algo de la tradición. Tú y yo somos gente literal. Sea cual sea la interpretación más obvia, ésa es nuestra verdad. Cuando las iglesias antiguas proclamaron sus leyes, sentaron un precedente. Ellos creen que la tierra consagrada rechaza nuestras almas y, puesto que su convicción es tan fuerte, nuestros cuerpos sienten dolor.” - Brenna Yovanoff

77. “Faith requires following the power of a whisper.” - Shannon L. Alder

78. “Our life stories are at one and the same time reality, fallacy and fantasy...” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

79. “People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

80. “When you change what you believe, you change what you do... which changes what you get.” - Odille Rault

81. “To think because you have been “saved” that you are now sane is insanity. God doesn’t fix the mind. He only gives you opportunities to have moments of clarity. It is your job to climb the mountain and see above the clouds for yourself, not to believe the congregation's interpretation of the view.” - Shannon L. Alder

82. “I have always found the hardest mind to change is one that is religious.” - Shannon L. Alder

83. “What sets science and the law apart from religion is that nothing is expected to be taken on faith. We're encouraged to ask whether the evidence actually supports what we're being told - or what we grew up believing - and we're allowed to ask whether we're hearing all the evidence or just some small prejudicial part of it. If our beliefs aren't supported by the evidence, then we're encouraged to alter our beliefs.” - Gary Taubes

84. “The beliefs of your country mostly become your own beliefs! Not the reason but the empty tales shape you!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

85. “We each have our own beliefs. What is important is not to piush your beliefs onto others.” - Samina Ali

86. “Insanity is everyone expecting you not to fall apart when you find out everything you believed in was a lie.” - Shannon L. Alder

87. “If you want to know what your true beliefs are- take a look at your actions.” - Robert Anthony

88. “Objective truth is difficult to come by, and even if you have it, what you can pass on to the next person is the story that you tell about it. In order for truth to be recognized as true, it has to be wrapped in plausibility. Just the same as lies. ("Another Word: Plausibility and Truth” - Daniel Abraham

89. “Do not make the mistake of thinking that you have to agree with people and their beliefs to defend them from injustice.” - Bryant McGill

90. “We only give credence to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position.""It seems a cold world without something . . . more.""On the contrary," said Oromis, "it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do, instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won't tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else's notions thrust upon you. You asked after our religion, and I have answered you true. Make of it what you will.” - Christopher Paolini

91. “I didn't want to be in hell, even for a moment. I sure as hell wasn't going there just to spit in the face of the Prince of Darkness, whoever he might be!On the contrary, if I was a damned thing, then let the son of a bitch come for me! Let him tell me why I was mean to suffer. I would truly like to know.As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.” - Anne Rice

92. “I touched the small sacred images. I shook my head and bit my lip, as if to say, How awful that he should have stolen these! But I also found it very funny. And further proof that God had no power over me.” - Anne Rice

93. “Don’t water your testimony with your righteous expectations of church members. Their imperfection will disappoint you every time and cause you to leave every church you try to join.” - Shannon L. Alder

94. “As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?” - Criss Jami

95. “They are moved less by the direct presence of their gods than by the more indirect feeling that they would somehow like their gods to be present.” - Daniel L. Pals

96. “People believe in God because they don't have any other explanation for things that happen.” - Jodi Picoult

97. “An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny.” - Steven Pinker

98. “Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.” - Idries Shah

99. “You may not be able to change the world for the better, but the world is able to change you for the worst, don't give them the rock you stand on.” - Anthony Liccione

100. “My belief is the belief of no beliefs. That's my belief.” - T. Scott McLeod

101. “Hope is a Heaven to keep you out of Hell. It's hard work believing that it's there.” - Ashly Lorenzana

102. “I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing.” - Bertrand Russell

103. “It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.” - Bertrand Russell

104. “When you devalue ethics and morals by proclaiming that our attitude toward them should be casual or lenient, you can't be surprised by a rising generation who then behaves disrespectfully, treating life, people, and choices as if they possess little value or worth.  For whether or not that was the intention, society has taught them to believe thusly.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

105. “No belief or idea is sacred, unless it treats all people as sacred” - Bryant McGill

106. “Our minds of infinite possibilities have been plowed, seeded and cultivated by every word, institution and sacred belief we hold dear, to produce a foul harvest of exclusion, apathy, brute domination and death.” - Bryant McGill

107. “Nationalism is form of collective narcissism, where the citizens possess an inflated self-love of "their own people," to the exclusion of other human beings.” - Bryant McGill

108. “If you want to discover the true character of a person, you have only to observe what they are passionate about.” - Shannon L. Alder

109. “It is my belief that love dies from overuse, and the heart dies from a lack of interest in life without it.” - Abigail Brown

110. “I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism.” - Barry Goldwater

111. “Your religion is not what you do on Sunday. It is how you live Monday through Saturday.” - Shannon L. Alder

112. “You can't stop negative thoughts from coming in, but you can make sure they leave as quickly as they enter.” - Nkem Mpamah

113. “We cannot trust our own minds, traditions and beliefs.” - Bryant McGill

114. “It is the socially determined norms and traditions of gender roles, which must be challenged, and challenged with vigor. In nearly all countries, including America, the truth is that women have a low social status, and are considered inferior.” - Bryant McGill

115. “Sometimes you have to look past a person’s mistakes to see God’s presence.” - Shannon L. Alder

116. “The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.” - Shannon L. Alder

117. “There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.” - Shannon L. Alder

118. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Often, love is a tangled web of lies that only a broken heart would weave. Seldom is dishonesty the whole person, rather it's the pain.” - Shannon L. Alder

119. “Often the truth is in front of your face, but your eyes and heart are so full of lies that you can't see it.” - Shannon L. Alder