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Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you,
by Philip Caputo

Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you,
its first order of business is to preserve itself,
and the way it preserves itself
is to keep you from having any doubts,
and the way it keeps you from doubting
is to blind you to the way things really are.
- Philip Caputo

Related topics: Cynical

True believers just don't see things the way they are,
because if they did, they wouldn't be true believers anymore.
- Philip Caputo

When an inner situation is not made conscious,
it appears outside as fate.
- Carl Jung

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What people believe prevails over the truth.
- Sophocles

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -
and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard Feynman

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west;
people create distinctions out of their own minds
and then believe them to be true.
- The Buddha

Our grandchildren's grandchildren will shake their heads in shame
at some of the beliefs that we hold most dear today -
the question is, which ones?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.
- Terry Goodkind

A widespread belief is more often likely
to be foolish than sensible.
- Bertrand Russell

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
- Michel de Montaigne

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown
is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell

The thing always happens that you really believe in;
and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Believe that life is worth living,
and your belief will help create the fact.
- William James

The final delusion is the belief
that one has lost all delusions.
- Maurice Chapelain

Envy comes from people's ignorance of,
or lack of belief in, their own gifts.
- Jean Vanier

Dumbo! C'mon, fly! Open them ears!
The magic feather was just a gag!
You can fly! Honest, you can!
- Timothy Q. Mouse in the movie Dumbo

The inherent nature of God
is not changed by our individual beliefs,
our religious institutions,
or our communal traditions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want.
It is the belief that God will do what is right.
- Max Lucado

Belief fuels our decisions -
even when we are not clearly aware of those beliefs.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

It's hard to believe, hard to be a believer,
when you see the way the things are in the world.
But I am a believer!
- Bono

When all is said and done,
the one sole condition that makes
spiritual happiness and preserves it
is the absence of doubt.
- Mark Twain

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul
grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Faith is much better than belief.
Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Although the world is full of suffering,
it is full also of the overcoming of it.
My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil,
but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good
and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good,
that it may prevail.
- Helen Keller

Anyone can heal who believes that he can
and will take the time to put that belief into motion.
- Ernest Holmes

Belief transcends ritual, structure and societal expectation.
It is an enlivening, intensely personal
core to our being. Our way of being.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

The greatest force in the human body
is the natural drive of the body to heal itself -
but that force in not independent of the belief system.
Everything begins with belief.
What we believe is the most powerful option of all.
- Norman Cousins

I want to share with you the three rules
that I have in order to accept an apprentice.
Rule Number 1: Don't believe me.
I don't want you to believe me
but I want you to listen and make choices - your choices.
If what I say, doesn't work for you, leave it.
But if it works for you and that's what you want, then make it yours.
Rule Number 2: Don't believe yourself.
Why? Because most of your belief system is a lie - it's not true.
And by believing yourself, you create all the limitations
that don't allow you to be what you really are.
Don't believe yourself. Listen to what you say,
listen to what you think, listen to what you believe.
And when you listen, open your ears, open your mind,
open your intelligence and make choices.
Rule 3 is, don't believe anybody else.
Don't believe them at all.
Open your ears and your mind; listen and make choices.
- don Miguel Ruiz

There are righteous people working
in a whole rainbow of belief systems -
from Hasidic Jews to right-wing Bible Belters
to charismatic Catholics.
- Bono

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.
- D. Elton Trueblood

There is a secret wisdom-of-the-ages
that holds the key to breaking our
cycle of self-imposed suffering.
The secret wisdom is, "Life is not supposed to be fair."
This is not sad news. This is GLORIOUS news!
Life is not broken. Nothing is wrong.
God has not failed, died, or gone on vacation.
The world is working perfectly. We just misunderstood.
Somewhere along the way, someone got the idea that
life was "supposed" to be "fair,"
and all the trouble started -
expectation, disappointment, resentment, anger -
a whole cycle of suffering that began
with the belief that life is "supposed" to be "fair."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Contrary to general belief,
I do not believe that friends are necessarily
the people you like best,
they are merely the people who got there first.
- Peter Ustinov

Prayer is a thought, a belief, a feeling,
arising within the mind of the one praying.
- Ernest Holmes

Faith is a living and unshakable confidence,
a belief in the grace of God so assured that
a man would die a thousand deaths for its sake.
- Martin Luther

In religion and politics, people's belief's and convictions
are in almost every case gotten at second hand,
and without examination
- Mark Twain

The only way to store information is by agreement.
The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind.
Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive.
Humans punish themselves endlessly
for not being what they believe they should be.
We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others,
but we cannot accept and love ourselves.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Beliefs have evolved based on survival value.
Certain belief systems have been more conducive than others
to people living long enough to reproduce,
and having a high rate of reproduction.
It's that basic.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The word "belief" is a difficult thing for me.
I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis.
Either I know a thing, and then I know it -
I don't need to believe it.
- Carl Jung

It is not our place to know the mind of God.
Spirit knows what is best in the long run -
best for each of us individually,
and best for humanity as a whole.
This is often very difficult to accept
when we see war and disease in the world
and experience physical and emotional suffering
in ourselves, our family, and our friends.
I consider this belief in God's infinite power
and ultimate wisdom to be the true test of faith.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something;
in the absence of good grounds for belief,
he will be satisfied with bad ones.
- Bertrand Russell

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken

You cannot divorce religious belief and public service.
I've never detected any conflict between
God's will and my political duty.
If you violate one, you violate the other.
- Jimmy Carter

Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.
- Thomas Szasz

Is a belief a perception of the five senses,
or is it a perception of emotional feeling?
Is it better to say "I sense" and/or "I feel"?
Is it better to say " I know" than "I believe"?
Is belief based on experience or on a idea?
My thinking is that belief/believing is a very missed used word.
- Anonymous

The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in a while
and watch your answers change.
- Richard Bach

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once we accept our limits, we can go beyond them.
- Albert Einstein

You need to make a commitment,
and once you make it,
then life will give you some answers.
- Les Brown

Shake structures.
School yourself.
Look twice at a thing,
once upside down.
Answer yourself clearly.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

What is once well done is done forever.
- Henry David Thoreau

A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.
- John Burroughs

Once you know yourself as a genuine seeker,
and when your own inner chamber is quite enlightened,
then comes the natural unfoldment of pure love and compassion
and a genuine desire to serve others.
- Rod Stryker

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe,
nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws,
but the smallest insect, we wish
to be created at once by special act.
- Charles Darwin

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
- William Shakespeare

You only live once, and once is enough
if you play your cards right.
- the movie Interiors (1978)

Once you label me, you negate me.
- Soren Kierkegaard

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose.
All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
- Helen Keller

All this worldly wisdom was once
the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau

Once you say you're going to settle for second,
that's what happens to you in life.
- John F. Kennedy

You only live once -
but if you work it right, once is enough.
- Joe E. Lewis

We come this way but once.
We can either tiptoe through life
and hope we get to death without being badly bruised
or we can live a full, complete life achieving
our goals and realizing our wildest dreams.
- Bob Proctor

Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing.
You don't win once in a while,
you don't do things right once in a while,
you do them right all the time.
Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
- Vince Lombardi

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens,
you can never regain their respect and esteem.
It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
- Abraham Lincoln

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along,
because once I have persuaded him, he will stick.
If I scare him, he will stay just as long
as he is scared, and then he is gone.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Through humor, you can soften some
of the worst blows that life delivers.
And once you find laughter,
no matter how painful your situation might be,
you can survive it.
- Bill Cosby

If we want to direct our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives,
but what we do consistently.
- Anthony Robbins

You only meet your once in a lifetime friend ...
once in a lifetime.
- Little Rascals

If you have an important point to make,
don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver.
Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again.
Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
- Winston Churchill

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie