Powerful Belief Quotes to Empower Yourself

• Lots of belief quotes and thoughts
• Learn about the power of belief
• Understanding beliefs is a way to empower yourself!
• WARNING: These quotes may amuse AND provoke you!

Thoughts and Quotes on Belief

Quotescoop.com is proud to present a large collection of the very best of quotes on belief.

This collection is pretty big, because beliefs are such an important part of the human experience. That's a fact we all know but which surprisingly few people give much thought - much to their own detriment. Life can be such fun if you know what beliefs are and how to deal with them.

In fact, if what you want is a good life then understanding and consciously using beliefs is one of the best things you can do for yourself. And you do want a good life, right?

If so, then please take the time to read through this page and some of its belief quotes. There are a lot of deep thoughts on belief there. Odds are, these quotes will be 'good on ya'!

Quotescoop.com is all about empowering you in an entertaining fashion. Why not learn new stuff, be subjected to questions that make you think and have a bit of fun at the same time? So, we have belief quotes that can make you smile as well as quotes about belief that may get your hackles up because they're provocative.

To set the mood, let's start out with 12 very short, but powerful quotes:

12 Short, but Powerful Belief Quotes

Man is what he believes

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.
~ The Bhagavad Gita ~

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
~ Bertrand Russell ~

Beliefs are the ultimate tool to either enslave you or set you free.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
~ Voltaire ~

It is not disbelief that is dangerous to our society; it is belief.
~ George Bernard Shaw ~

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright ~

Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right.
~ Henry Ford ~

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer ~

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.
~ Edith Hamilton ~

At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~

Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

How's that for short, succinct quotes? But while the above belief quotes can surely make you think, we've got more quotes for you, lots of other thoughts on belief, belief quotations and quotes about believing. As mentioned this collection of quotes is fairly big, because the power of belief is so great, and there is a lot to say about it.

Your Four Main Uses for the Power of Belief

To put it plainly, there are four main things you can do with beliefs:

1. You can keep believing your beliefs as they are
2. You can ask 'what is belief?' to understand the power of belief
3. You can change your beliefs
4. You can let your beliefs go completely

This may sound self evident but when it comes to beliefs remembering these things is true self empowerment. Why?

Because of the nature of beliefs, which means that you will tend to confuse your beliefs with reality.

This is an exceedingly important fact about beliefs - it is the basis of the power of belief. This is why, as one of the short quotes above stated, "beliefs are the ultimate tool to either enslave you or set you free".

You think your beliefs are reality - which they are not. (We'll get back to that shortly).

What We'll Look Into Here

On this page of belief quotes we're not going to go into point 1) above, the one where you keep believing your beliefs as they are, because that's boring - where's the challenge or the fun in that?

Instead we're going to look at the nature of belief and ask the questions 'what is belief?' [point 2) above] and 'why do we have beliefs?' - as well as briefly check out what you can actively do with your beliefs: Change them or let them go - both of which will certainly change your life experience for the better (even if it feels scary).

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
~ William Somerset Maugham ~

When you exchange a limiting belief for a less limiting belief you empower yourself. When you let a belief go completely you both empower yourself and set yourself free.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
~ Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi ~

Some believe in existence. Others believe nothing exists. Rare is the one who believes nothing and is never confused.
~ Astavakra Gita ~

Moving on, first, let's look into the nature of belief.

So What Is Belief?

So, then what is belief? Well, as you can se on this page power of belief a belief is like a frozen set of thoughts, feelings and behavioral patterns:

A belief is a set of thoughts about yourself and the world, locked or frozen into place. A belief is a choice, a decision, a deeply felt and steadfastly held opinion about reality. In fact, a belief is a way of creating your own, personal reality. A belief also has a level of depth, ranging from superficial, easily changed beliefs to deep seated core beliefs that are quite resistant to change.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

So, basically a belief is a set of thought that has been either been etched into your consciousness.

This process can EITHER happen all at once, provided it's done with enormous power (a trauma or shock can often cause you to believe something) OR over time, typically by incessant repetition (as we know from the old Soviet Union and former DDR (East Germany): if a lie is repeated enough times it takes on a sheen of truth).

The American world champion boxer and activist (b.1942) Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay) said it quite clearly in this belief quote:

It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.
~ Muhammad Ali ~

Here are a couple of those somewhat long, but still powerful belief quotes that will also answer the 'what is belief?' question:

You STILL believe things that you decided when you were just two years old. Those are among your core beliefs. Would you care to examine and reconsider your core beliefs and maybe let them go, or would you rather let a two year old kid decide for you how to live your life today?
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Believe enough in something and your mind will go rigid in that area. Your mind will freeze into position and become inflexible. You will be unable to see - or even consider - anything other than your belief, whatever that may be. Believe enough and you will go mentally blind. This can be useful when the belief is empowering and you want to achieve something, but devastating in just about every other case.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Or, as a famous Irish playwright, essayist and literary critic who lived from 1856 to 1950 and received the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, put it:

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
~ George Bernard Shaw ~

You can also put belief in even shorter and more provocative terms, as this American writer did:

Belief is the death of intelligence.
~ Robert Anton Wilson ~

Why We Think We Need Belief!

So, why are we so obsessed with believing? The answer is simple: We are scared.

As the spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) said in this powerful quotes about belief:

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~

In other words, fear forms the basis of our perceived need for belief. Or, differently put:

The need to believe is fear based.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

This is terribly, awfully important, because if you are into self improvement, self help and personal development you may be aware of just how bad the results you get are, when you base something on fear. Fear based stuff is NOT good for you.

What is it we fear? The answer to that is fairly simple and straight forward. It can in fact be given in three words: We fear unpleasantness.

Motivation 101: We humans crave feelings and experiences that feel good (happiness, love, inner peace, freedom) while we fear and want to avoid feelings and experiences that feel bad (pain, and not having our needs met). Unfortunately we have forgotten that trust in ourselves and life (and not fear of ourselves and life) is the way to get what we crave.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

It doesn't get much simpler than that, now does it? We want the pleasant feelings and experiences and not the unpleasant ones. In the inspirational quote above what is stated about the unpleasant feelings and experiences is that they consist of pain and not having our needs met.

You can't have fear without need.
~ Candace Silvers ~

Needs that Can Create Fear!

At the middle of this page: the Personal Development Guy's Empowerment Theory - under the heading 'The Personal Development Guy's 7 Polarized Basic Human Needs' - you'll find a brief overview of the 7 basic human needs.

From the basic needs of physical survival & reproduction/sex (vs. death instinct & abstinence) to safety, comfort & predictability (vs. unpredictability & challenge) to control, responsibility & freedom to the higher social needs like recognition, a feeling of belonging plus giving and receiving and to the even higher needs of personal development, unity and wholeness ... those are the needs that keep us living in fear. Not the fact that we experience those needs but the fact that we don't trust ourselves and life enough:

The problem with our perceived needs is not that we feel them, but the fact that we do not trust ourselves and life enough to fulfill those needs. As soon as we do, most of our problems vanish as if by magic.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

The kind of insecurity and fear exploited by the current [2002] U.S. administration [under George W. Bush] may be good for business in the short run, but it’s bad policy in the long run. Human energy, when manipulated by fear, can become distorted and destructive. Fear can incapacitate and paralyze us, keeping our energy in check. But when the energy does assert itself, it can do so in horrendous ways. Addictive consumerism, adherence to narrow beliefs about the nature of reality, and desperate clinging to what deadens us are some of those. Conformity to fabricated and obsolete worldviews, such as one that sanctions the bombing of other countries to protect our hegemony over resources like oil, is another. Giving in to despair is yet another.
~ K. Lauren de Boer ~ , earthlight.org

Our free will is for choosing. At any and all times we have the choice between love and fear or trust and distrust. The consequences of choosing fear and distrust are not nice. The consequences of choosing love and trust are.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.
~ Salman Rushdie ~

Creativity comes from trust.
~ Rita Mae Brown ~

So, as these belief quotes indicate by not trusting ourselves and life with regard to our needs, we set ourselves up for failure, pain and various other kinds of unpleasantness. And thus we get the very things we wanted to avoid in the first place - all the nastiness.

... what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~

Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be.
~ Lactantius ~

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.
~ Hafiz of Persia ~

Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake.
~ Edgar Wallace ~

Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.
~ Swedish Proverb ~

Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear.
~ Cheri Huber ~

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts.
~ Marianne Williamson ~

When Fear knocks at your door, let Trust answer it and you'll see that no-one and nothing is there.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

The Power of Intuition

The thing is, we have forgotten how to listen to our inner knowing - the small, still voice within, the voice of our soul, the voice of life itself. Cultural indoctrination based on a relatively low level of self awareness (or, if you prefer: a low level of spiritual awareness) sees to that.

Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
~ Carl Jung ~

In short, we think and believe too much.

It hardly matters where in the world we live, it is still true.

Just listen to these powerful quotes:

It's not possible to have a problem without believing a prior thought. To notice this simple truth is the beginning of peace.
~ Byron Katie ~

Faith means living with uncertainty - feeling your way through life, letting your heart guide you like a lantern in the dark.
~ Dan Millman ~

Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
~ Albert Einstein ~

When you are willing to stop looking for something in thought, you find everything in silence.
~ Gangaji ~

Silence is telling you everything you need to be happy ... but you keep interrupting her!
~ Michael Jeffreys ~

Knowing versus Believing

There is great clarity in the small, still voice within, our intuition, because the voice of life itself does not feel doubt - as the name says it is an inner KNOWING. You know the truth in your heart of hearts; all you need to do is TRUST this knowing.

Here is one of our oldtime favorite belief quote:

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
~ Benjamin Spock ~

But, of course, much of the time many of us don't - much to our own detriment. Instead of trusting ourselves and life we listen to our incessantly chattering, fear-based minds. And, being fear-based, our minds feel doubt - lots and lots of doubt, because such is the nature of that which is fear based.

Then, being afraid of the uncertainty, of the mystery of life, we prefer the apparent (but not real) safety and stability of dogma - our beliefs.

Here are more quotes about fear:

Beliefs are of the mind, and the mind is of fear.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Only your mind can produce fear.
~ A Course in Miracles ~

Fear always springs from ignorance.
~ Emerson ~

Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.
~ Japenese proverb ~

Belief is only needed in the absence of knowing. In fact, belief can only exist in situations where absolute truth or absolute reality do not seem available (even though they always are, inside ourselves).
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Or, as the 32nd President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) put it in what may just be the most famous fear quote of modern times:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt ~ (from: First Inaugural Address, 4th of March, 1933)

But - silly, misguided and destructive as it may be (and is) we have all been brought up to believe in what our fear based mind tells us. So, having been thoroughly confused from an early age and forward, and therefore feeling an apparent lack of inner guidance we feel alone, uncertain and afraid. This makes us turn to outside guidance instead ... with predictably lousy results.

The Power of Belief Used for Destruction

Of course, the power of belief can be devastating, if used for insidious or destructive purposes. Which it has - many, many, MANY times over the years. Even this very minute a lot of people and a lot of organizations are trying to manipulate your beliefs, and thus your view of reality. It is enough to become seriously confused as these belief quotes say.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.
~ Laurence J. Peter ~

Because of the power of belief whole populations can be held in ignorance or what amounts to slavery just by making sure that they (or most of them) believe certain things.

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
~ Edith Sitwell ~

Whole populations can also be persuaded to commit (or at least silently accept) atrocities just by making sure they (or most of them) believe that this is the right thing to do just like this powerful belief quote conveys:

All wrong-doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do.
~ Arnold Bennett ~

The Holocaust of the 1940s where millions of Jews lost their lives because a select elite of Nazis managed to persuade a big enough part of the German population that Jews were to blame for just about everything is one example.

The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.
~ Max Born ~ (German Physicist. Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954. 1882-1970)

The Holocaust was "way back" in the 1940s, but in fact we have recently seen similar things in Rwanda (the Rwandan genocide) and Bosnia (the Bosnian genocide) as well as what amounts to genocide in several other countries around the world, including e.g. Cambodia, China, Burundi and Bangladesh (check out genocide at encyclopedia.com if you like).

It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
~ Sally Kempton ~

Would it be possible for someone in power to get his or her people to commit atrocities on such a large scale if the people actually doing the dirty work did not believe they were doing the 'right thing'? Hardly. For people to do extremely destructive (life denying) things, belief HAS to be involved. Belief is the only sure way to override our natural, human compassion.

There is far more to this world than taught in our schools, shown in the media, or proclaimed by the church and state. Most of mankind lives in a hypnotic trance, taking to be reality what is instead a twisted simulacrum of reality, a collective dream in which values are inverted, lies are taken as truth, and tyranny is accepted as security. They enjoy their ignorance and cling tightly to the misery that gives them identity.
~ Thomas Cox ~

The weaker the intellect, the stronger the belief.
~ James Dee Richardson ~

It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool, but what he knows that ain't so.
~ Josh Billings ~

In fact, a mad and senseless thing such war as such is ONLY possible because the leaders of a country manage to convince its army and/or its people that they are 'the good guys' and whomever the leaders want to go to war with are 'the bad guys'. And here belief quotes and visual effects also play a rather sad role. Just watch a few wartime posters like these:

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.
~ Leo Rosten ~

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.
~ Mark Twain ~

Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.
~ Inspirational Quotes about Belief ~

So, in the words of the Hindu Prince Siddharta Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, who lived some two and a half millennia ago (563-483 B.C.), please don't just believe something because some person in authority tells you to:

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 ~

The Power of Belief Is Great ... But You Decide Your Beliefs

You don't have to believe anything. Nor do you have to doubt everything. There are better ways than the ways of dogma, be they dogma of belief or dogma of non-belief.

Just let your intuition guide you in these quotes about belief:

Happiness, success, inner peace and spiritual enlightenment are readily available. You just need ... not the power of belief, but the power of no belief - the freedom you get when you let go of your beliefs.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Or, in the words of a great contemporary American who passed away not long ago (1955–2011):

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
~ Steve Jobs ~

Of course, you can say pretty much the same thing in fewer words, like in this sample:

In short, we think, fear and believe too much and intuit, love and trust too little.
~ Soren Lauritzen ~ , the Personal Development Guy

Don't follow a trend. Follow your heart.
~ Krist Novoselic ~

Only do what your heart tells you.
~ Princess Diana ~

"... have the courage to follow your heart and intuition ... Everything else is secondary" is what the legendary founder of Apple Computer said, and we all know which particular energy is concentrated in your heart region, right?

Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
~ Marianne Williamson ~