Conviction Quotes - Page 30

• Many causes produce war. There are ancient hatreds, turbulent frontiers, the "legacy of old forgotten, far-off things, and battles long ago." There are new-born fanaticisms. Convictions on the part of certain peoples that they have become the unique depositories of ultimate truth and right.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  War, Unique, Long Ago

  Franklin D. Roosevelt's Address at Chautauqua, New York, August 14, 1936.

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• It is commonly said that if rational argument is so seldom the cause of conviction, philosophical apologists must largely be wasting their shot. The premise is true, but the conclusion does not follow. For though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.

  Austin Farrer

  Philosophical, May, Causes

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• I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis.

  Criss Jami

  Strong, Rigor Mortis, Enemy

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.111, Criss Jami

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• It is the philosophers, theologians, and evangelists who are said to be filled with pride and bigotry due to the strong convictions that they represent. On the contrary, teachings can be either taken or dismissed; whereas voting is the only thing the average person can do to force everyone to live how they would prefer. A simple vote is among the largest yet most acceptable forms of bigotry, and that is because people play the card only when they feel that in doing so it conveniences themselves.

  Criss Jami

  Strong, Teaching, Taken

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.110, Criss Jami

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• Be not afraid! In admitting a creator, refuse not to examine his creation; and take not the assertions of creatures like yourselves, in place of the evidence of your senses and the conviction of your understanding.

  Frances Wright

  Understanding, Admitting, Like You

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.45

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• I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Believe, Essence, States

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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• Men who have lost their conviction of what is good and what is bad find themselves without a sextant to check their position by. We are in the position of a man with an elaborate camping kit who finds himself lost in the woods without his matches; to kindle a fire he has to resort to the stratagems of the caveman. We fall back through generations into the oldest terrors and confusions of the race.

  John Dos Passos

  Fall, Men, Fire

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• The greatest challenge of Leadership maintaining personal conviction in a globalized world.

  Myles Munroe

  Challenges, World, Maintaining

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• This book's title, Rough Beauty , conveys Anderson's conviction that the hard scrabble lives of most of the residents of Vidor, Texas, are worthy of our attention, but it also conveys that he does not seek to beautify their lives by removing the crude edges.

  Anne Wilkes Tucker

  Book, Texas, Titles

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• Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophical, Thinking, Doubt

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.129, Simon and Schuster

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• But if there has been on this earth no real, perfect human life, no love that never cooled, no faith that never failed, which may shine as a loadstar across the darkness of our experience, a light to light amidst all convictions of our own meanness and all suspicions of other's littleness, why, we may have a religion, but we have not a Christianity. For if we lose Him as a Brother, we cannot feel Him as a Saviour.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Brother, Real, Light

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.318

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• Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial, and not an inquisitorial, system - a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured, and may not, by coercion, prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Law, Guilt, Principles

  "Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 20, 1961.

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• Often we comfort ourselves only with words, but if we pray enough, the conviction will come too that Christ is our King, not Stalin, Bevins, or Truman. That He has all things in His hands, that 'all things work together for good for those that love Him.

  Dorothy Day

  Kings, Hands, Working Together

  Dorothy Day, Peter Day (1999). “On Pilgrimage”, p.85, A&C Black

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• My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with.

  Dorothy Day

  Party, Rejection, Movement

  Dorothy Day, Peter Day (1999). “On Pilgrimage”, p.203, A&C Black

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• Inquire, investigate, doubt yourself and others. To find truth, you must not cling to your convictions; if you are sure of the immediate, you will never reach the ultimate. Your idea that you were born and that you will die is absurd – both logic and experience contradict it.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Ideas, Doubt, Logic

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• There are ten church-members by inheritance for one by conviction.

  Austin O'Malley

  Church, Inheritance, Members

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• The most human thing about anyone is a thing he learns and ... and earns. It's a thing he can't have when he's very young; if he gets it at all, he gets it after a long search and a deep conviction. After that it's truly part of him as long as he lives.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Long, Young, Humans

  Theodore Sturgeon (1965). “More Than Human”

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• Artists are people who are subject to irrational convictions of the sacred. Baudelaire said that an artist is a child who has acquired adult capacities and discipline. Art education should help build those capacities and that discipline without messing over the child.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Art, Children, Discipline

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• It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.

  George Eliot

  Struggle, Love Is, Iron

  George Eliot (2005). “Four Novels of George Eliot”, p.1166, Wordsworth Editions

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• Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government.

  Learned Hand

  Passion, Men, Law

  Learned Hand (1968). “The art and craft of judging: the decisions of Judge Learned Hand”

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• Never for a moment do we lay aside our mistrust of the ideals established by society, and of the convictions which are kept by it in circulation. We always know that society is full of folly and will deceive us in the matter of humanity. ... humanity meaning consideration for the existence and the happiness of individual human beings.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Humanity, Matter, Moments

  "Kulturphilosophie". Book by Albert Schweitzer. Translated by C. T. Campion as "Philosophy of Civilisation" (1949) Chapter 26, 1923.

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• When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Truth, Peculiar, Said

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

  Ayn Rand

  Truth, Integrity, Knowledge

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.101, Penguin

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• We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself.

  Jane Addams

  Forget, Results, Accumulation

  Jane Addams, Charlene Haddock Seigfried (2002). “Democracy and Social Ethics”, p.33, University of Illinois Press

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• Whether a law be void for its repugnancy to the Constitution, is, at all times, a question of much delicacy, which out seldom, if ever, to be decided in the affirmative, in doubtful case. ... But it is not on slight implication and vague conjecture that the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers, and its acts to be considered as void. The opposition between the Constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.

  John Marshall

  Strong, Law, Judging

  Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 128, 1810.

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