This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge." - Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski
"It is good... to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another. Probably in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings; a conviction as necessary as it is difficult to acquire. All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ration; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply." - Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
"False beliefs tend to undermine the identification of the subject matter; to undermine, therefore, the validity of a description of the belief as being about that subject... The more things a believer is right about, the sharper his errors are. To much mistake simply blurs the focus." - Donald Davidson
"There is a gap between belief and knowledge... If you can’t know it, you can’t believe it either." - Fred Dretske, fully Frederick "Fred" Irwin Dretske
"Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth." - Mary Baker Eddy
"Sickness is a belief, which must be annihilated by the divine Mind." - Mary Baker Eddy
"The advertising industry is one of our most basic forms of communication and, allegedly, of information. Yet, obviously, much of this ostensible information is not purveyed to inform but to manipulate and to achieve a result -- to make somebody think he needs something that very possibly he doesn't need, or to make him think one version of something is better than another version when the ground for such a belief really doesn't exist." - Marvin E. Frankel
"It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"A current time-slice theory makes the justificational status of a belief wholly a function of what is true of the cognizer at the time of belief. An historical theory makes the justificational status of a belief depend on its prior history. Since my historical theory emphasizes the reliability of the belief-generating processes, it may be called ‘historical reliabilism.’" - Alvin Ira Goldman
"There is no separation between a patient’s neurobiology, spiritual life, life perspectives, and quality of life force. Words, and spiritual/therapeutic interventions can tangibly affect a patient’s neurochemistry and physical health just as assuredly as psycho-pharmacological drugs can tangibly affect a patient’s feelings and thoughts... I have found that working with the meaning of a patient’s illness can profoundly alter not only the prognosis but can influence and give meaning to all other aspects of a patient’s life. Depression, for example, is often a direct communication from the soul that one’s belief system is not working... It is all too easy, and part of the human condition, to be misled by our lower half into believing that the sensory world is all that’s real." - Brian Greer
"Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"If a thought or belief does not serve you, let it go!" - Louise L. Hay
"Beware of the beginnings of vice. Do not delude yourself with the belief that it can be argued against in the presence of the exciting cause. Nothing but actual flight can save you." - Benjamin R. Haydon
"It is a deep-seated belief on the part of almost all Americans that their success will be better assured as they help to build the success of others." - Paul G. Hoffman, fully Paul Gray Hoffman
"Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief of a large one." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"“Do you want to be healed?” translates into “Do you want to exorcise your belief in and expectation of illness?" - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
"A change in belief patterns takes place on the most basic level of existence." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
"Belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that will guarantee the success of any venture." - William James
"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help you create the fact." - William James
"It need not discourage us if we are full of doubts. Healthy questions keep faith dynamic. In fact, unless we start with doubts we cannot have a deep-rooted faith. One who believes lightly and unthinkingly has not much of a belief. He who has a faith which is not to be shaken has won it through blood and tears - has worked his way from doubt to truth as one who reaches a clearing through a thicket of brambles and thorns." -
"It strains belief to know that Neil Armstrong can walk on the moon, 250,000 miles away, but that he cannot swim in Lake Erie, a few miles from his Ohio home." - Ted Kennedy, fully Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
"The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe - the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"Organized religion obviously prevents the understanding of a problem because the mind is conditioned by dogma and belief." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Truth is not to be known. What is known is a thing of the past; it is already dead. Truth is living, not static; therefore you cannot know truth. Truth is a constant movement, it has not abode, a mind that is tethered to a belief, to knowledge, to a particular conditioning, is incapable of understanding what truth is." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Belief in a future life is the appetite of reason." - Walter Savage Landor
"With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another." - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"Belief in immortality gives dignity to life and enables us to endure cheerfully those trials which come to us all. As the thought of immortality occupies our minds, we gain a clearer conception of duty and are inspired to cultivate character. Living for the future is not coward's philosophy, but an inspiration to noble and unselfish activity." - Samuel M. Lindsay
"Belief cannot be commanded." - Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"Belief is a truth held in the mind. Faith is a fire in the heart." - Joseph Fort Newton
"The divisions and boundaries that we perceive based upon our five senses are, in effect, an illusion. It’s my belief that the meaning of life changes from day to day, second to second. I believe we’re here to learn that we’re part of a creative force - I would go so far as to call that force divine. We’re here to learn that we can create a world and that we have a choice in what we create, and that our world, if we choose, can be a heaven or hell." - Thomas E. O’Connor
"Inherent in any system of belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy: what is expected is observed and what is observed confirms the expectations. When an individual alters his belief system he becomes aware of vast new realms of possibility." - Kenneth R. Pelletier
"If one should tell of a telescope so exactly made as to have the power of seeing; of a whispering gallery that had the power of haring; of a cabinet so nicely framed as to have the power of memory; or of a machine so delicate as to feel pain when it was touched - such absurdities are so shocking to common sense that they would not find belief even among savages; yet it is the same absurdity to think that the impressions of external objects upon the machine of our bodies can be the real efficient cause of thought and perception." - Paul Reichmann
"Science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders. Instead, its steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles... [Science moves with][ the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty." - James Watson, fully James Dewey Watson
"Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love." - Simone Weil
"Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature." - John Greenleaf Whittier
"“Why are we here?” is surely the most important question human beings must face, whatever their origin, whatever their belief. Our obligation is to confer meaning to life and, in doing so, overcome temptations of passivity and indifference. A person who chooses indifference is dead without knowing it. In his or her case, life has no meaning, nor does death. And yet for those who believe in sharing experiences, life does have meaning in spite of the meaningless death some of us may have witnessed. Those who share teach us that one must make every minute rich and enriching, not for oneself but for someone else, thereby creating living links between the individuals and groups. Ultimately, life is a gift and meaning is its reward. So is the art and ability of asking questions. The meaning of life is to be found in the question that becomes encounter. Then every moment becomes a moment of grace." -
"Each of us carries about a great many 'truths' with which we are not only comfortable but which we consider sacrosanct. These 'truisms' can be things we learned at our parent's knee... idealities we have nurtured over the years... or prejudices we have hugged to ourselves over a period of time. More often than not, our personal convictions take precedence over antithetical arguments. This is why most people are not good listeners. They hear another person's thesis but simultaneously they form an argument to back their own belief. The result is that they really aren't listening. They are simply hearing. And they mentally counter what it is they choose to hear." - Greta Woodrew, Pseud. for Greta Andron Smolowe
"I knew that the complete mystic “way” includes both intellectual belief and practical activity; the latter consists in getting rid of the obstacles in the self and in stripping off its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of Him." - Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali
"The constants in all religion are the mystery of the universe, the nostalgia of the human spirit for an order beyond the show and flux of things to which it believes itself akin, and the belief that it has evidence of such an order." - Gaius Glenn Atkins
"A belief that we were created by God for a purpose does not then provide us with the kind of adequate account of life’s meaning we might expect. Religions are not clear about what this purpose is. The idea that it is to serve God seems deeply implausible and contrary to most conceptions of God’s nature." - Julian Baggini
"Belief in God is belief in the highest Truth and Right, exalted above the wrongness of the world. But this Truth demands the creative participation of man and the world. But this Truth demands the creative participation of man and the world. It is divine-human; in it the ideal humanity operates." - Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
"A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition." - José Bergamin, fully José Bergamín Gutiérrez
"Doubt attracts “reasons” for not succeeding, whereas belief finds the means to do the job. Do not see yourself merely in terms of how you appear now. Absorbing the blows is a quality of greatness. Every big success is created one step at a time." - Tom Butler-Bowdon