Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they’re not all growing in their faith, they’re not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior.

It’s always interesting about God because it’s like all of the religions in the world say that they pray to the same God, and yet they ask that same one God to divide itself up and agree with this one and fight against that one.

I don’t believe in nepotism. I don’t much like the idea of parents who interfere.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‚Why did you do that?‘ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

Back in my days as a chemistry student, I used to be quite a technocrat. I was firmly convinced that scientists would have cornered God and photographed Him in color by 1951.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Lenience will operate with greater force, in some instances than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have all of my conduct distinguished by it.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.

The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

Even the best teams can fail. Celebrities can fade. There is only One in whom your faith is always safe, and that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you need to let your faith show!

The most positive men are the most credulous.

Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

I believe the scripture says that being gay is a sin.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

When I walk outside, people have something to say about it.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

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.

It’s not the tools that you have faith in – tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.

There’s been some research in cognitive science, I’m told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it’s white noise.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

I knew credibility would come only in time and through earnest performances.

Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

The word ‚God‘ usually signifies ‚Lord‘, but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God.

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes.

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.