We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
What is the foundation of our opinion? Numberless things; sometimes reason.
We believe, first and foremost, what makes us feel that we are fine fellows.
We were like a lot of clocks, he thought, all striking different hours, all convinced we were telling the right time.
One has to tell people what to think. There’s no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it.
We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship.
A set of beliefs is at once a way of seeing the world more clearly while, at the same time, foreclosing an alternative vision.
A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.
The worship of Opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.
Where is the world whose people don’t prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.
The great safeguard of society and of domestic life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
I said to myself, “I cannot possibly believe that”; and as I did so I perceived that I had already believed it a second time.
A frame of mind may become habitual and fixed, and then it becomes for that man a philosophy of life, an attitude toward it. A wise man would be careful not to let any particular frame of mind settle down into a permanent attitude, knowing that once he has got it, he will take a stubborn pleasure in it.
At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
“What I believe” is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.
The belief that becomes truth for me . . . is that which allows me the best use of my strength, the best means of putting my virtues into action.
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.
