It’s been suspected for a long time that the effectiveness of medical treatment depends partly on the patient’s faith in it. This power of belief – the Placebo Effect – offers hope that the mind can heal the body or at least reduce pain. The Mind Machine: Pain & Healing, 1988
Once a belief or expectation is found, especially one that resolves uncomfortable uncertainty, it biases the observer to notice new information that confirms the belief, and to discount evidence to the contrary. This self-perpetuating mechanism consolidates the original error and builds up an overconfidence in which the arguments of opponents are seen as too fragmentary to undo the adopted belief. David Marks & Richard Kammann, Psychology of the Psychic
Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe? Adam Weishaupt
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Thomas Huxley
Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed. Walter Lippmann
Since becoming a journalist I had often heard the advice to believe nothing until it has been officially denied. Claud Cockburn, A Discord of Trumpets p190
I know three things will never be believed – the true, the probable, and the logical. John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent
You see, Christians use Hell as a way to scare people into believing what they believe. But to believe in something just because you’re afraid of the consequences of not believing in something is no reason to believe in something. South Park
Every time a child says, I don’t believe in fairies, there's a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead. J M Barrie, Peter Pan, 1928
Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands! ibid.
Just believe. Finding Neverland 2004 starring Kate Winslet & Johnny Depp & Freddie Highmore & Dustin Hoffman & Julie Christie et al, director Marc Forster, boy to assembled ladies and J M Barrie
If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Duke of Wellington, to man who accosted him in street as Mr Jones
Philosophy is an odd thing ... The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn’t true, you must absolutely assume there is no after-life. You cannot for one second I think abrogate the responsibility of believing that this is it. Stephen Fry, televised interview
It really just means what you are going to take for granted, what your acts are, and what you’ll assent to, gamble on. Colin McGinn, philosopher
Why should Belief determine whether we’re dumped in Hell? esias
Why would a rational God give a rat’s arse about whether we believe in Her? Why would God set Faith as the deciding factor in winning Her favour? esias, essay ‘The Trouble With God’
We’re in a lot of trouble ... because you people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than 3% of you people read books. Because less than 15% of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over of this tube. Right now there is a whole – an entire – generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube! This tube is the gospel! The ultimate revelation! This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers. This tube is the most awesome god-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people ... And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome god-damned propaganda for us in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be paid to the truth on this network! So you listen to me. Listen to me. Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park; television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troop of acrobats, story-tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion-tamers and football players – we’re in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever going to find any real truth. But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We‘ll tell you anything you want to hear. We’ll lie like hell ... We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day night after night all ages, colors, creeds, where are you now? You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that you’re own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like a tube. You eat like a tube. You raise your children like a tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name: you people are the reality. We are the illusion. Network 1976 starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Ned Beatty & Wesley Addy & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Conchata Ferrell et al, director Sidney Lumet
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. Soren Kierkegaard
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey. Soren Kierkegaard
It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen. Muhammad Ali
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
One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. Joan of Arc
We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon. Franklin D Roosevelt
Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe. Gail Devers
I am confident that, in the end, common sense and justice will prevail. I’m an optimist, brought up on the belief that if you wait to the end of the story, you get to see the good people live happily ever after. Cat Stevens
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds. William James
Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He is dead in this world who has no belief in another. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life. Jiddu Krishnamurti
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. Jiddu Krishnamurti
A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour. Aldous Huxley
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. John Maynard Keynes
And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning. Isaac Asimov
Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly. Isaac Asimov
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
All money is a matter of belief. Adam Smith
I confused things with their names: that is belief. Jean-Paul Sartre
She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist. Jean-Paul Sartre
I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief. Immanuel Kant