Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
I’m a good liberal, and I grew up in a very liberal family and had very strongly held beliefs.
I’ve been so willing to stay strong and stick to my guns for so long when it comes to my beliefs.
On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’
I would never want to deny my Mennonite background and culture; I’ll always feel like and be identified as a Mennonite and therefore possess that little extra authority on our beliefs. I also see myself as a Canadian writer.
True respect means taking other people’s beliefs seriously and assuming they are adult and intelligent enough to be able to cope with it if you tell them, clearly and civility, why you think they are totally, utterly and disastrously wrong.
My core beliefs revolve around the idea that we should live to the best of our abilities-we should live and let live.
I felt like I was growing up with two different churches, in a sense. And that’s always stayed with me – not just the religion of it – but the day-to-day understanding that these beliefs, that faith itself, is something that I need as something to sustain me.
To assert that it is possible to establish peace between men of different nations is simply to assert that man, whatever his ethnical background, his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable of reason.
I believe that everyone, regardless of their beliefs, deserves the dignity of being called by their name.
Mankind is not special by virtue of our address in the universe, or what spins around us, or because life originated here. Slowly, but surely, we’ve been compelled to renounce the comfort of these beliefs.
Whether Trump knew it or not, his strong language tapped into evangelical beliefs about the ‘last days’ and America’s role in biblical prophecy.
As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs.
I have strong views and beliefs. And I stand up for those.
I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.
I don’t want to give advice to people about their religious beliefs, but I do think that it’s not smart to bet against the power of science to figure out the natural world. It used to be, a thousand years ago, that if you wanted to explain why the moon moved through the sky, you needed to invoke God.
Human cultural diversity is vast; the range of cultural practices, beliefs, and languages that we speak is vast.
Religious institutions should have religious freedom on this issue. No church or minister should ever have to conduct a marriage that is inconsistent with their religious beliefs. But I think as a civil institution, this issue’s time has come and we need to move forward.
My attraction to the Church of Satan… is the same thing that initially attracted me to punk rock. It was something that wasn’t very entirely popular, and it was sort of like the adversary to mainstream culture and beliefs.
Life is very, very simple and easy to understand, but we complicate it with the beliefs and ideas that we create.
I knew when I met Morgan that she was the perfect girl because she was in college, she was an athlete and we had the same morals and beliefs and I knew that she would be a great mom.
David Cameron can change the branding of the party, but he can’t change the beliefs.
In novels in general – and also on the television – we do live in a world where bodies is what we are. We do not talk about the spirit or the soul, and there is a sense that we no longer talk about beliefs, either Freudian or Marxist.
I just don’t like the separatism that comes from religion, and, without fail, the need to put your beliefs on someone else. When you start telling someone else how to live, you should check yourself, man.
If you are a certain kind of white conservative, especially a white male conservative, then Roger Ailes was a hero. He constructed a world in which your core beliefs and your gut instincts were, and still are, constantly validated.
Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
At ‘SNL,’ I wrote political stuff, but I never felt the show should have an axe to grind. But when I left in ’95, I could let my own beliefs out.
Being stuck is a position few of us like. We want something new but cannot let go of the old – old ideas, beliefs, habits, even thoughts. We are out of contact with our own genius. Sometimes we know we are stuck; sometimes we don’t. In both cases we have to DO something.
I design my start-up ventures around my own personal beliefs and values.
Gandhi held no formal position of authority. Nor was there an organized army standing behind him. What he did have were his core beliefs and the audacity to speak truth to power.
The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political – and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone’s deeply held beliefs.
I will always respect the beliefs of fellow Christians who aren’t comfortable reading or writing explicit love scenes, but I believe romances are beautiful and spiritual books that celebrate the best of what love has to offer and mirror the love God has for his children.
Being a magician taught me how powerful the element of surprise can be. In each book, I’ve tried to work that in – an unexpected twist in a story that reveals an insight, a counter intuitive study that turns your beliefs upside-down.
In conversion you are not attached primarily to an order, nor to an institution, nor a movement, nor a set of beliefs, nor a code of action – you are attached primarily to a Person, and secondarily to these other things.
It’s interesting as a mom to reflect on your own parenting skills. The core of our beliefs may stay the same, but our perspective changes over the years and evolves with each child that comes through us.
We can trust our doctors to be professional, to minister equally to their patients without regard to their political or religious beliefs. But we can no longer trust our professors to do the same.
Since I was not able wholly to subscribe to any one set of beliefs advanced by any ‘guru’ I had to fall back on my own, however derivative.
I am much more radical in my beliefs than my products represent me to be.
To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life – bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.
For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.
I wanted to write about how people’s beliefs shift.
It’s quite difficult to get through to the people who are really committed to these anti-progressive beliefs.
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
I’m totally open to changing my beliefs. I could grow up to be a total communist. I could grow up to be a Neocon. I’m looking to have my views challenged. I’m looking to be corrected.
My mother herself is a very independent woman, and I’ve had a leading example in this respect. And my father is a very liberal father who has always taught us to question things. He lives life on his own terms and stands by his beliefs. So, he has also been a great example.
I’ve run my mouth pretty good about my beliefs.
Growing up I was very feminist. I had strong opinions, but I would go about my beliefs in the wrong ways.
We are living in a globalised world and most of us are worried stiff about powerful interest groups steadily pushing India towards obscurantist and fundamentalist beliefs and regressive economic policies.
I am proud to be an American, and proud that such beliefs are at the core of our country and its citizens.
I needed a lot of the good things that church provided. But as I grew older, it became increasingly hard for me to rationalize the importance of church in my life with the beliefs that it required that were at odds with modern science.
Based on a lifetime of observations and a few decades in the markets, I understand that societies, beliefs and fashions all move in long arcs of time. We call these arcs several things: cycles, periods, eras.
Kirsten Gillibrand and I are very similar in our biographies. We’re both mothers, we’re both lawyers. But we couldn’t be more different in our beliefs, in our principles, in our politics.
We learn our belief systems as very little children, and then we move through life creating experiences to match our beliefs. Look back in your own life and notice how often you have gone through the same experience.
