Contrary to general belief, by Peter Ustinov

Contrary to general belief,
by Peter Ustinov

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives
when it's so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.
- Jimmy Carter

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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

This communicating of a man's self to his friend
works two contrary effects;
for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.
- Francis Bacon

Real excellence and humility are
not incompatible one with the other,
on the contrary they are twin sisters.
- Jean Baptiste Lacordaire

We need less posturing and more genuine charisma.
Charisma was originally a religious term,
meaning "of the spirit" or "inspired."
It's about letting God's light shine through us.
It's about a sparkle in people that money can't buy.
It's an invisible energy with visible effects.
To let go, to just love, is not to fade into the wallpaper.
Quite the contrary, it's when we truly become bright.
We're letting our own light shine.
- Marianne Williamson

Because we fear the responsibility for our actions,
we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves.
Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence,
we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor"
not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state,
whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us.
- Butler D. Shaffer

Men in general judge more from
appearances than from reality. All
men have eyes, but few have
the gift of penetration.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.
- Socrates

Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval -
a thing which, to the general run of the human race,
is more dreaded than wolves and death.
- Mark Twain

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
- Thomas Jefferson

I think with the Romans, that the general of today
should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
- Thomas Jefferson

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver.
The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver,
the less he demands in slaughter.
- Winston Churchill

Experience demands that man is
the only animal which devours his own kind,
for I can apply no milder term to
the general prey of the rich on the poor.
- Thomas Jefferson

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness,
the general mind must be strengthened by education.
- Thomas Jefferson

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for
grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
- Charles Darwin

You have made people listen.
You have made people care, and you have taught us
that whether we are poor or prosperous,
we have only one world to share.
You have taught young people that
they do have the power to change the world.
- Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, to Bono. (November 1999)

Nuts.
- General Anthony Clement McAuliffe
responding to a German demand to surrender his
101st Airborne Division in Belgium during World War II.

In most communities it is illegal
to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly.
Should it not be considered serious international misconduct
to manufacture a general war scare
in an effort to achieve local political aims?
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

Envy comes from people's ignorance of,
or lack of belief in, their own gifts.
- Jean Vanier

Our grandchildren's grandchildren will shake their heads in shame
at some of the beliefs that we hold most dear today -
the question is, which ones?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Believe that life is worth living,
and your belief will help create the fact.
- William James

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -
and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard Feynman

Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want.
It is the belief that God will do what is right.
- Max Lucado

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

When all is said and done,
the one sole condition that makes
spiritual happiness and preserves it
is the absence of doubt.
- Mark Twain

When an inner situation is not made conscious,
it appears outside as fate.
- Carl Jung

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west;
people create distinctions out of their own minds
and then believe them to be true.
- The Buddha

The inherent nature of God
is not changed by our individual beliefs,
our religious institutions,
or our communal traditions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown
is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell

Dumbo! C'mon, fly! Open them ears!
The magic feather was just a gag!
You can fly! Honest, you can!
- Timothy Q. Mouse in the movie Dumbo

Anyone can heal who believes that he can
and will take the time to put that belief into motion.
- Ernest Holmes

Although the world is full of suffering,
it is full also of the overcoming of it.
My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil,
but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good
and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good,
that it may prevail.
- Helen Keller

The final delusion is the belief
that one has lost all delusions.
- Maurice Chapelain

A widespread belief is more often likely
to be foolish than sensible.
- Bertrand Russell

The greatest force in the human body
is the natural drive of the body to heal itself -
but that force in not independent of the belief system.
Everything begins with belief.
What we believe is the most powerful option of all.
- Norman Cousins

Prayer is a thought, a belief, a feeling,
arising within the mind of the one praying.
- Ernest Holmes

Faith is a living and unshakable confidence,
a belief in the grace of God so assured that
a man would die a thousand deaths for its sake.
- Martin Luther

It's hard to believe, hard to be a believer,
when you see the way the things are in the world.
But I am a believer!
- Bono

In religion and politics, people's belief's and convictions
are in almost every case gotten at second hand,
and without examination
- Mark Twain

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul
grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Belief fuels our decisions -
even when we are not clearly aware of those beliefs.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

It is not our place to know the mind of God.
Spirit knows what is best in the long run -
best for each of us individually,
and best for humanity as a whole.
This is often very difficult to accept
when we see war and disease in the world
and experience physical and emotional suffering
in ourselves, our family, and our friends.
I consider this belief in God's infinite power
and ultimate wisdom to be the true test of faith.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The only way to store information is by agreement.
The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind.
Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive.
Humans punish themselves endlessly
for not being what they believe they should be.
We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others,
but we cannot accept and love ourselves.
- don Miguel Ruiz

I want to share with you the three rules
that I have in order to accept an apprentice.
Rule Number 1: Don't believe me.
I don't want you to believe me
but I want you to listen and make choices - your choices.
If what I say, doesn't work for you, leave it.
But if it works for you and that's what you want, then make it yours.
Rule Number 2: Don't believe yourself.
Why? Because most of your belief system is a lie - it's not true.
And by believing yourself, you create all the limitations
that don't allow you to be what you really are.
Don't believe yourself. Listen to what you say,
listen to what you think, listen to what you believe.
And when you listen, open your ears, open your mind,
open your intelligence and make choices.
Rule 3 is, don't believe anybody else.
Don't believe them at all.
Open your ears and your mind; listen and make choices.
- don Miguel Ruiz

There are righteous people working
in a whole rainbow of belief systems -
from Hasidic Jews to right-wing Bible Belters
to charismatic Catholics.
- Bono

Belief transcends ritual, structure and societal expectation.
It is an enlivening, intensely personal
core to our being. Our way of being.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Faith is much better than belief.
Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

There is a secret wisdom-of-the-ages
that holds the key to breaking our
cycle of self-imposed suffering.
The secret wisdom is, "Life is not supposed to be fair."
This is not sad news. This is GLORIOUS news!
Life is not broken. Nothing is wrong.
God has not failed, died, or gone on vacation.
The world is working perfectly. We just misunderstood.
Somewhere along the way, someone got the idea that
life was "supposed" to be "fair,"
and all the trouble started -
expectation, disappointment, resentment, anger -
a whole cycle of suffering that began
with the belief that life is "supposed" to be "fair."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.
- D. Elton Trueblood

Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.
- Thomas Szasz

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something;
in the absence of good grounds for belief,
he will be satisfied with bad ones.
- Bertrand Russell

Beliefs have evolved based on survival value.
Certain belief systems have been more conducive than others
to people living long enough to reproduce,
and having a high rate of reproduction.
It's that basic.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken

You cannot divorce religious belief and public service.
I've never detected any conflict between
God's will and my political duty.
If you violate one, you violate the other.
- Jimmy Carter

The word "belief" is a difficult thing for me.
I don't believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis.
Either I know a thing, and then I know it -
I don't need to believe it.
- Carl Jung

Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you,
its first order of business is to preserve itself,
and the way it preserves itself
is to keep you from having any doubts,
and the way it keeps you from doubting
is to blind you to the way things really are.
- Philip Caputo

Is a belief a perception of the five senses,
or is it a perception of emotional feeling?
Is it better to say "I sense" and/or "I feel"?
Is it better to say " I know" than "I believe"?
Is belief based on experience or on a idea?
My thinking is that belief/believing is a very missed used word.
- Anonymous

You will not be punished for your anger,
you will be punished by your anger.
- The Buddha

The essence of life is not in
the great victories and grand failures,
but in the simple joys.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Contrary to general belief,by Peter Ustinov

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Contrary to general belief,
by Peter Ustinov