In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on Earth, there first had to be hundreds of millions of protein molecules of the Ninth Configuration. But, given the size of the planet Earth, do you know how long it would take for just one of these protein molecules to appear by chance? Roughly 10 to the 243rd power, billions of years; and I find that far, far more fantastic than simply believing in a god.
-The Ninth Configuration (movie)

Colonel Kane: You're convinced that God is dead because there's evil in the world.
Captain Cutshaw: Correct.
Colonel Kane: Then why don't you think He's alive because of the goodness in the world?
-The Ninth Configuration (movie)

A sign inside the front door of Holy Cross Primary School, in north Belfast, reads: "If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe."
-, Chris Thornton - Time Magazine

I believe in the sun even if it isn't shining. I believe in love even when I am alone. I believe in God even when He is silent.
-Anon., (sometimes attributed to a World War II refugee)

yamai wa ki kara
"sickness is a thing of the spirit"
-Japanese Proverb

"And if we now cast our eyes over the nations of the earth, we shall find that, instead of possessing the pure religion of the Gospel, they may be divided either into infidels, who deny the truth; or politicians who make religion a stalking horse for their ambition; or professors, who walk in the trammels of orthodoxy, and are more attentive to traditions and ordinances of men than to the oracles of truth."
-Samuel Adams

Of course I don't believe in it. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.
-Neils Bohr, [When asked why he had a horseshoe on his wall]

"The wisest is he that knows only that he knows nothing. God only knows. We mortals are only troubled with morbid little ideas, sired by circumstance and damned by folly. The human head can absorb only the flavorings of its surroundings. We assume that our faith political and our creed religious are founded upon our reason, when they are really made for us by social conditions over which we had little control."
The book is becoming rare but some can still be found on the internet. It was printed and hard bound using private funds. Number of copies unknown. It bears no Library of Congress number. See also, "Brann and the Iconoclast" University of Texas Press, author Charles Carver, date 1957
-William Cowper Brann

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
-Buddha

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

The Unicorn looked dreamily at Alice, and said “Talk, child.”
Alice could not help her lips curling up into a smile as she began: “Do you know, I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!”
“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
-Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, ch. VII, 1872

"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it."
-Jacob Chanowski

As soon as you begin to believe in something, then you can no longer see anything else. The truth you believe in and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
-Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape

There may indeed be those who would prefer to deny the existence of a God so powerful, rather than believe that all other things are uncertain. But let us not oppose them for the present, and grant that all that is here said of a God is a fable; nevertheless in whatever way they suppose that I have arrived at the state of being that I have reached -- whether they attribute it to fate or to accident, or make out that it is by a continual succession of antecedents, or by some other method -- since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author to whom they assign my origin the less powerful. To these reasons I have certainly nothing to reply, but at the end I feel constrained to confess that there is nothing in all that I formerly believed to be true, of which I cannot in some measure doubt, and that not merely through want of thought or through levity, but for reasons which are very powerful and maturely considered; so that henceforth I ought not the less carefully to refrain from giving credence to these opinions than to that which is manifestly false, if I desire to arrive at any certainty [in the sciences].
-Rene Descartes, Meditations On First Philosophy in which the Existence of God and the Distinction Between Mind and Body are Demonstrated

We are resolved to protect individual freedom of belief. This freedom must include the child as well as the parent. The freedom for which we stand is not freedom of belief as we please,... not freedom to evade responsibility, ...but freedom to be honest in speech and action, freedom to respect one's own integrity of thought and feeling, freedom to question, to investigate, to try, to understand life and the universe in which life abounds, freedom to search anywhere and everywhere to find the meaning of Being, freedom to experiment with new ways of living that seem better than the old.
-Sophia Lyon Fahs, "A New Ministry to Children," quoted in Cornerstones, p.7.

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.
-Robert Fulghum, The Storyteller's Creed

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."
-Alexander Hamilton, attributed, also attributed to others with some variations

The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth…
If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness.
-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, pp. 80-81, 1951

"No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence."
-Ann Landers

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now? Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
-John Lennon

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
-C.S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?" The Weight of Glory and other Addresses (New York: Harper Collins publishers, 1980), p. 140

Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
-Abraham Lincoln

Have you heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, "I seek God! I seek God!" As many of those who do not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter...
"Whither is God," he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are murderers.... God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him...
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 126, 1882

"I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life. Les Jeux."
-Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol 7, 1980

There is no argument in the world that carries the hatred that a relioious belief does. The more learned a man is, the less consideration he has for another man's belief.
-Will Rogers