This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is not belief that is dangerous in our society: it is belief.
The whole record of civilization is a record of the failure of money as a higher incentive. The enormous majority of men never make any serious effort to get rich. The few who are sordid enough to do so easily become millionaires with a little luck, and astonish the others by the contrast between their riches and their stupidity... The belief in money as an incentive is founded on the observation that people will do for money what they will not do for anything else.
Belief | Civilization | Contrast | Effort | Enough | Failure | Little | Luck | Majority | Men | Money | Observation | People | Riches | Stupidity | Will | Riches | Failure |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Religion [cannot] maintain itself apart from thought, but either advances to the comprehension of the idea, or, compelled by thought itself, becomes intensive belief - or lastly, from despair of finding itself at home in thought, flees back from it in pious horror, and becomes superstition.
Belief | Despair | Pious | Religion | Superstition | Thought | Thought |
George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
Power-worship blurs political judgment because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
Belief | Judgment | Power | Present | Will | Worship | Winning |
No one, it is true, will be able to boast that he knows that he knows there is a God and a future life; for, it he knows this, he is just the man whom I have long wished to find... My conviction is not logical, but moral certainty; and since it rests on subjective grounds (of the moral sentiment), I must not even say: It is morally certain that there is a God, etc., but: I am morally certain, that is, my belief in God and in another world is so interwoven with my moral nature that I am under as little apprehension of having the former torn from me as of losing the latter.
Belief | Future | God | Life | Life | Little | Man | Nature | Sentiment | Will | World | God |
Opinion is a consciously insufficient judgment, subjectively as well as objectively. Belief is subjectively sufficient, but is recognized as being objectively insufficient. Knowledge is both subjectively and objectively sufficient. Subjective sufficiency is termed conviction (for myself); objective sufficiency is termed certainty (for all).
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps doubt in reserve.
Assertion | Doubt | Philosophy | Reserve |
Four things are required to develop generosity of spirit: (1) The intention to serve God in all our affairs. (2) The belief that if that intention is honored, the Universe will provide all that is required materially and spiritually for our success. (3) The understanding that we receive as we give, and that our own creativity is enhanced through mentoring others. (4) Practical groundedness. God can’t deliver the lottery jackpot unless we buy a ticket!
Belief | Creativity | Generosity | God | Intention | Receive | Spirit | Success | Understanding | Universe | Will | God |
One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.
Those for whom the belief in immortality is most vivid are the most likely to practice the virtues which have a survival value and the least likely to deviate into either those virtues or those vices which are exclusively human.
Belief | Immortality | Practice | Survival | Value |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
If our belief is passionate enough, the river comes to us and in whatever form the passionate belief makes possible. Belief is causative and passion is formative. Passionate belief is the chaotic attractor that lifts chaos into its particular order.
We are called upon to love in faith – to nurse our firm belief in the stars of sweet reasonableness that continue to shine behind the darkness of events which seem to us our and grim beyond our understanding.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Grief is not natural but a matter of belief or opinion.