What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.
~Ezra Pound

This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question.
~Orson Scott Card

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
~Seneca

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872

He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.
~Thomas Fuller

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

An old belief is like an old shoe. We so value its comfort that we fail to notice the hole in it.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878

He who does not know how to believe, should not know.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories.
~Felix Cohen

Few really believe. The most only believe that they believe or even make believe.
~John Lancaster Spalding

Men never do evil so thoroughly and cheerfully as when they do it for conscience sake.
~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

Not... what opinions are held, but... how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, [liberal] opinions are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
~Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950

When I believe in nothing I do not want to meet you when you believe in nothing.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views.
~Nikolai Gogol

Just because something is unbelievable does not mean you shouldn't believe it. Put another way, some things are worth believing in whether they're true or not.
~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
~Laurens van der Post

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
~Ralph Hodgson, The Skylark and Other Poems

I believe that there is an explanation for everything, so, yes, I believe in miracles.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never the correctness, of a belief.
~Arthur Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, 1932

It is easier to believe than to doubt.
~E.D. Martin, The Meaning of a Liberal Education

Man tends to treat all his opinions as principles.
~Herbert Agar

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
~Bertrand Russell