73 Conviction Quotes

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

Nations around the world look to us for the leadership not merely by strength of arms but by strength of our convictions.

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.

Someone once described me as a maverick and that's what I would say. I'm a maverick not by choice but by conviction.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

I don't know very much but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it:My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.

Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy.

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his causes.

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, - and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

Briefly, then, we dismiss the two opposite dangers of bigotry and fanaticism, bigotry which is a too great vagueness and fanaticism which is a too great concentration. We say that the cure for the bigot is belief; we say that the cure for the idealist is ideas. To know the best theories of existence and to choose the best from them (that is, to the best of our own strong conviction) appears to us the proper way to be neither bigot nor fanatic, but something more firm than a bigot and more terrible than a fanatic, a man with a definite opinion. But that definite opinion must in this view begin with the basic matters of human thought, and these must not be dismissed as irrelevant, as religion, for instance, is too often in our days dismissed as irrelevant. Even if we think religion insoluble, we cannot think it irrelevant. Even if we ourselves have no view of the ultimate verities, we must feel that wherever such a view exists in a man it must be more important than anything else in him.

While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.

Well I know what's right, I got just one life. In a world that keeps on pushin' me around, but I'll stand my ground and I won't back down.

Feeling... clamoured wildly. 'Oh, comply!' it said. '... soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?' Still indomitable was the reply: 'I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad-as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation... They have a worth - so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane - quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs.

'This book (Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt) means more to me than anything I've ever done, I'm not offering agnostic explanations. He is real. He worked miracles. He is the Son of God! And there is so much more to write.'

I had some personal problems, and I started listening to a lot of radio ministers. I listened every Sunday all day, flipping the dial up and back. So, I heard just about every guy on Sunday. And then I heard Mr. Armstrong, and I said, 'Ah, God has finally shown me the one, I guess.'

I never stood in front of another human who was as quick as him. He not only had the quickness but he had the inner confidence to muster the conviction to do so. I've seen others who had the speed but lack conviction or vice versa. He was like Ali, he had both. I stood before both of these men, so I know.

Rudeness: 'A mistake made by many people with great convictions is that they will let nothing stand in the way of their views, not even kindness.'

Truth: 'There is little more powerful than when truth joins action.'

'You have no idea how great he is, really you don't. You have no comprehension - it's absolutely impossible. I can't tell you why he's so great, but he is'.

There is a great difference between still believing something and again believing it.

But 'twas a maxim he had often tried, That right was right, and there he would abide.

If you have a faith, if you've some deep conviction, whether you're a Nazi or a Communist or what the hell else you are - then you can sacrifice yourself and others to your faith. But from the moment you've no faith - from that moment you live in a deep inner confusion - from then on you're exposed to what Strindberg calls 'the powers'.

I am a good Christian, properly baptized and I will die... a good Christian.

I know very few who are willing to die for their convictions. I wouldn't be hit on the head with a billy club or have mace squirted in my face. When I was younger and a radical at American University maybe: as a matter of fact, I was at the march on the Pentagon just last year, right in the front taking pictures, just being there to find out what was happening, and I was knocked down and stepped on. I don't want to do that again. It didn't accomplish anything. They lied about everything that happened. Everything in the newspapers were just lies.

The fast is a very personal and spiritual thing, and it is not done out of recklessness. It's not done out of a desire to destroy yourself, but it is done out of a deep conviction that we can communicate with people, either those that are for us or against us, faster and more effectively spiritually than any other way.

There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

So far as I am concerned, it does not matter what others may say, or think, or do, as long as I am sure that I am right with myself and the cause. There are so many who seek refuge in the popular side of a great question. As a Socialist, I have long since learned how to stand alone.

This creature, this Baab, with his spiritual weapons, was in the end found guilty on fifty-five counts of murder, on twenty-on counts of attempted murder, on thirty counts of assault and battery, and a variety of lesser offences.

People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.

Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen!

Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen.

Vencereis pero no convencereis.

The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as 'faith'.

In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath.

Yes, I did have to struggle very hard to get this [the vote on the Iraq war] through, but the reason I did it was because I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn't take this on myself... just because I thought, 'Let's give myself a really hard time for a couple of years!'