50 Orson Scott Card Quotes on Belief

Orson Scott Card quotes on belief

1. 'I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature,' he said, irritated at my failure to respond. 'Nature's virtue is intact,' I reassured him. 'I just know some different laws.'

4. [It] was written and sold. I knew it was a strong story because I cared about it and believed in it. I had no idea that it would have the effect it had on the audience. While most people ignored it, of course, and continue to live full and happy lives without reading it or anything else by me, there was still a surprisingly large group who responded to the story with some fervency.

86. I only disbelieve the unbelievable

124. Why are they so stupid? Not to know the truth when they hear it? This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question.

125. He wasn't telling the truth, with trumpets; he was telling the truth, the story you wouldn't think to doubt because it's taken for granted.

148. I desire [belief] enough to act as if I believed, maybe that's what faith is. Or deliberate insanity.

186. You're only so sure you're right because they're so sure you're wrong.

210. All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

212. Your trust in rationality makes you irrational.

214. I know it as much as anyone knows anything. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon.

216. You don't believe that for a second. But I believe that I believe it. And for me that's pretty good. Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet.

254. Bean was tired of talking about this. She looked so happy when she talked about god, but he hadn't figured it out yet, what god even was. It was like, she wanted to give god credit for every good thing, but when it was bad, then she didn't mention god or had some reason why it was a good thing after all

257. You speak in theological terms, and yet I thought you were an unbeliever' theology is a joke to me. Amusing! I laugh at it. I can tell amusing stories about theology, to jest with believers

288. But he held his tongue, because, in the back of his mind, in the deepest corner of his heart, he still had hope that Ender might do what could not be done.

305. You are so intent that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you rely believe without believing that you believe it.

320. In the end...oneself is the only person anyone can convince.

339. ...'The story the oversoul tells me fit's all the facts that I see. Your story, in which I'm endlessly deceived, can also explain all those facts. I have no way of knowing that your story is not true-but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me-your life, your view of life-is the lie.'

362. If I wanted to doubt then I could doubt endlessly. But at some point a person has to stop questioning and act, and at that point you have to trust something to be true. You have to act as if something is true, and so you choose the thing you have the most reason to believe in, you have to live in the world that you have the most hope in.

366. The others are even more likely to obey their god Which is? It dangles between their legs

418. He knew she meant it. Everyone knew she meant it, and everyone knew what she said was true. Everyone had know it for years.

425. Wishful thinking gives false gods to people who hunger for gods, but those who yearn for a world with no gods are no less likely to fall victim to their own wishful thinking

438. How can we ever know what's true? We can't. That's what I figured out a long time ago. So you don't believe in anything? I believe in everything that seems true to me right now. I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe in now turn out to be false later. It helps keep me from being upset

459. Because you're really, really sure doesn't that mean you're right?

482. There was once a man who knew me better than I knew myself. Who saw strength in me that I didn't know was there

492. What you call intellectual honesty I call self-deception

493. [He] had no illusions - the doctrine he was going to be teaching, starting tonight, was not the sort of ideology that would stir souls; no one would die for this religion. It would only attracts converts by promising a return to old tradition and by seeming to be the religion of the future

500. Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth.

504. I always tell what I believe. Whether it's true, I'm no more sure than any man

509. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth' and the words did pierce him, and he understood them, though he could not have put in words what it was he understood. Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth. If it feels true to me, then there is something true in it, even if it isn't all true. And if I study it out in my mind, then maybe I can find what parts of it are true, and what parts are false, and - and Alvin realized something else. That all his arguments with thrower came down to this : that if something just plain didn't make sense to Alvin, he didn't believe it, and no amount of quoting from the bible would convince him. Now Taleswapper was telling him that he was right to refuse to believe things that make no sense 'Taleswapper, does that mean that what I don't believe can't be true? 'Truth can never be told as to be understood, and not be believed

543. Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable

586. It makes people willing to act according to what they believe. To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps...loosen them up

587. Right, of course, you're the only person in history who is completely immune to her religious upbringing.

594. [He] had somehow grown up with a belief that unfairness was to be, not endured, but corrected. So when he saw injustice, he corrected it

644. Why am I so certain of my doubt? What? why is doubt the one thing we're never skeptical of? We question other peoples' beliefs, and the more sure they are the more we doubt them. But it never occurs to us to doubt our own doubt. Question our own questions. We think our questions are answers

690. I think the secret to [her] skill at lying is that she never tells a lie that she doesn't believe with all her heart, at least for the moment it takes to tell it

692. Even the most 'Rational' people - the ones who claimed not to have a religion - were just as chauvinistic about their irreligion, sneering at and ostracizing the believers just the way the believers treated nonmembers of their own groups. It's a human universal

724. All the causes or purposes of all our acts are just stories we tell ourselves, stories we believe or disbelieve, changing all the time. But still we live, still we act, and all those acts have some kind of cause. The patterns all fit together into a web that connects everyone who's ever lived with everyone else. And every new person changes the web, adds to it, changes the connections, makes it all different. That's what I find with this program, how you believe you fit into the web Not how I really fit? How can I know? How can I measure it? I discover the stories that you believe most secretly, the stories that control your acts. But the very telling of the story changes the way you believe. Moves some things into the open, changes who you are. I undo my work by doing it

729. I think god stopped paying attention long ago

766. They were right even though there was no way, no sensible way, no logical way they could be right

779. Is he really a believer? Father thinks so. He says the older you get, the more you believe in god, whatever face he wears

839. I think you underestimate the ability of some men to bear the truth No you underestimate the ability of some men to believe that when they are told what they want to hear, it must be true

855. So it was his own will, not gods, he wanted you to submit to? I don't think it ever occurred to him that there might be a difference between the two

894. Once someone honestly believes something to be a fact, he'll never doubt it without pretty convincing evidence

898. You don't exist, you can't be real she means it one way, but I believe it another

956. If I believe it she can kill me with my own fear

963. Why give you answers you wont believe? Well, answers I don't believe would be a step forward

1001. The truth was that neither the first nor the second test proved anything. But if they thought it proved something, he was just as dead.

1036. I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines - the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by. (Shadow of the Hegemon) Spoken by Sister Carlotta

1061. Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. -Children of the Mind

1080. Everyone you say who says that they have no religious beliefs is just so certain about their belief that they accept it as truth. If you just start asking probing questions, and they start getting mad, then you've found their religion.