During seasons of great pestilence, men have often believed the prophecies of crazed fanatics, that the end of the world was come. Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity.
Charles Mackay (1814-1889) Scottish poet, journalist, song writer
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “Modern Prophecies” (1841)
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Quotations about:
believer
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Nothing so outrages the feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever — nothing so horrible as a charitable Atheist.
Religious believers of the world, you are free to continue to debate the simple, narrow question that divides you from atheists, but you have no right, in so doing, to treat the Humanists of the world with contempt. You owe them a deep debt of gratitude, for not only have they shed much light on a naturally dark world but they have very probably helped civilize your own specific religion.
Steve Allen (1922-2000) American composer, entertainer, and wit.
Vulgarians at the Gate (2001)
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If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
Graham Greene (1904-1991) English novelist [Henry Graham Greene]
The Comedians [Dr. Magiot] (1966)
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We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Essay (1860), “Worship,” The Conduct of Life, ch. 6
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Based on a course of lectures, "The Conduct of Life," delivered in Pittsburg (1851-03).
The most dangerous heresy of our time, it bears repeating, is the belief that belief in itself is a good thing, regardless of its content; for faith that is attached to an unworthy or inadequate object makes people less than they are, not more.
If you derive pleasure from the good which you have performed and you grieve for the evil which you have committed, you are a true believer.
Muhammad (AD c. 570-632) Arab religious, military, and political leader; founder of Islam [Mohammed, مُحَمَّد]
The Sayings of Muhammed, #67 [tr. Al-Suhrawardy (1941)]
GEORGE: There is presumably a calendar date — a moment — when the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite suddenly, secretly, the noes had it.
Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
Jumpers, Act 1 (1972)
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Part 3, ch. 13, § 62 (1951)
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The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish playwright and critic
Androcles and the Lion, Preface (1912)
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The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish playwright and critic
Man and Superman, “Maxims for Revolutionists: Idolatry” (1903)
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