Belief

"I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble."But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg."That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em."

"If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to the true believers of all the great religions of the world" Birbal was a devout Brahmin from Trivikrampur, but he answered unhesitatingly, "I would say to them that in my opinion they were all atheists as well; I merely believe in one god less than each of them." "How so" the Emperor asked. "All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own," said Birbal. "And so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in"

"Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief,but it is belief that is the positive, it is beliefthat sustains thought and holds the world together."

"My technique is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite."

"I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief."

"It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window."

"If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead."

"What do I believe that I deserve in this life?"

"You can believe something really hard,' Faith says, 'and still be wrong."

"You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?"

"The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity."

"Man is what he believes."

"That's the thing about magic; you've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you."

"You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it."

"It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey."

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."

"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man."

"It's what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are."

"We believe in bravery. We believe in taking action. We believe in freedom from fear and in acquiring the skills to force the bad out of our world so that the good can prosper and thrive. If you also believe in those things, we welcome you."

"I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am."