#belief

The same tools that make any writer good, plus a cheerful willingness to suspend belief. ↗

— Fred Saberhagen

#belief #cheerful #good #make #plus

There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art. ↗

— Douglas Sirk

#art #banality #because #belief #common

Too many religious organizations are in the business of enforcing beliefs. ↗

— Charley Pride

#business #enforcing #many #organizations #religious

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. It is intellectual bankruptcy. ↗

— Dan Barker

#faith #faith

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system. ↗

— Jane Smiley

#child #controversial #every #germ #ideas

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#carl-sagan #cosmos #age

... researchers argue that it's of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be tested experimentally. Come to think of it, many still do in twenty-first-century society. ↗

— Eric Chaisson

#black-holes #science #testing #worship #age

Hierarchy and discipline gave shape to the world;that was what he had always believed.Life was made easy by adherence toa rigid structure.But maybe that only really worked when you were at the top of the ladder,when you were doing well.The further down the rungs you went,the more of a victim of circumstances you became and the less it mattered whether or not you were in control. ↗

— James Lovegrove

#discipline #life #systems #age

It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#self-belief #society #attitude

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#stories #truth #art