Quotes about beliefs

Ministers become a sort of miniature kings in their turn. Though they have the greatest opportunity of observing the impotence and unmeaningness of the character, they envy it. It is their trade perpetually to extol the dignity and importance of the master they serve; and men cannot long anxiously endeavor to convince others of the truth of any proposition without becoming half convinced themselves.

You know, if I tried to change the minds of everyone who I thought needed changing, I’d never have time to do anything else.

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Aw, Darac, come on; argue, dammit.”

“I don’t believe in argument,” he said, looking out into the darkness (and saw a towering ship, a capital ship, ringed with its layers and levels of armament and armor, dark against the dusk light, but not dead).

“You don’t?” Erens said, genuinely surprised. “Shit, and I thought I was the cynical one.”

“It’s not cynicism,” he said flatly. “I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.”

“Oh well, thank you.”

“It’s comforting, I suppose.” He watched the stars wheel, like absurdly slow shells seen at night: rising, peaking, falling...(And reminded himself that the stars too would explode, perhaps, one day.) “Most people are not prepared to have their minds changed,” he said. “And I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excuses.”

“Excuses, eh? Well, if this ain’t cynicism, what is?” Erens snorted.

“Yes, excuses,” he said, with what Erens thought might just have been a trace of bitterness. “I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you’re supposed to argue about, come later. They’re the least important part of the belief. That’s why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place.” He looked at Erens. “You’ve attacked the wrong thing.”

Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.

Religious values tend to be especially deeply held and hence frequent cause of disastrous behaviour. [...] The modern world provides us with abundant secular examples of admirable values to which we cling under conditions where those values no longer make sense [...] It appears to me that much of the rigid opposition to environmental concerns in the First World nowadays involves values acquired early in life and never again reexamined [...].

[..] the values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.

Believe worked well enough when a man could not measure it against facts. But when he could…Facts crushed to belief like a mammoth crushing a vole.

“Every word you say is true,” O’Doull answered. “Every single word. But saying it, no matter how true it is, doesn't make anybody on either side change his mind.”

What people believe and what they’ll do because they believe it is a big part of what’s real, especially in politics.

You cannot understand a man's actions unless you understand his beliefs.

Personal beliefs are unarguable, even if the other side has all the facts.

To the Chasmites, truth is determined by how well it fits their expectations, and doesn't that sound familiar?