Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.

Belief | People | Unbelief | Wisdom |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.

Assertion | Belief | Fear | Wisdom |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Belief | Faith | Wisdom |

Thomas E. O’Connor

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.

Belief | Choice | Day | Force | Heaven | Hell | Illusion | Life | Life | Meaning | Wisdom | World | Learn |

Kenneth R. Pelletier

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.

Belief | Individual | Prophecy | Self | System | Wisdom |

Paul Reichmann

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.

Belief | Cause | Common Sense | Memory | Pain | Perception | Power | Sense | Thought | Wisdom | Absurdity | Think | Thought |

James Watson, fully James Dewey Watson

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.

Adventure | Arrogance | Belief | Events | Play | Science | Spirit | Truth | Wisdom |

Gaius Glenn Atkins

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.

Belief | Evidence | Mystery | Order | Religion | Spirit | Universe |

José Bergamin, fully José Bergamín Gutiérrez

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

Belief | Doubt | Superstition |

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali

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.

Belief | Freedom | God | Heart | Self | God |

Julian Baggini

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.

Belief | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | God |

John Greenleaf Whittier

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.

Aspiration | Belief | Good | Human nature | Inquiry | Knowledge | Lesson | Love | Nature | Truth | Wisdom | Aspiration | Child |

Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev

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.

Belief | God | Humanity | Man | Right | Truth | World | God |

Tom Butler-Bowdon

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.

Belief | Doubt | Greatness | Means | Success | Time |

Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole

What you believe matters less than your capacity for belief - and your willingness to translate belief into constructive action.

Action | Belief | Capacity |

Paul Davies

In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful.

Arrogance | Awe | Beauty | Belief | Elegance | Humility | Looks | Object | Religion | Science | Sense | Theories | Truth | Universe | World | Beauty |

Albert Einstein

A conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God.

Belief | Experience | God | Mind | Order | Rationality | Work | World |

Emmet Fox

Every condition in your life is the out-picturing of a belief in the subconscious. Every ailment, every difficulty that you have, is but the embodiment of a negative idea somewhere in your subconscious, which is actuated by a charge of fear. Prayer wipes out these negative thoughts and then their embodiment must disappear too. The healing must come.

Belief | Difficulty | Fear | Life | Life | Prayer |