Home > Topic > our convictions
1 " What is truth" I was asked. " Truth is neither good nor bad. Neither evil nor pure. It just is." That's what I told her. Because through our convictions of good and bad, of evil and pure, we taint the truth with our own filters and our own desires. Truth is no respecter of what that man over there thinks is good or of what that woman over there thinks is evil. Truth remains as Truth, regardless of what you think about it. "
2 " [It] is well and good when our convictions are based upon the “Thou shalts” and the “Thou shalt nots” of Scripture rather than our own ideas. "
― Billy Graham , Billy Graham in Quotes
3 " We may differ on many things, but what we respect is freeinquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement betweenProfessor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins,concerning “punctuated evolution” and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shallresolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication. "
― Christopher Hitchens , God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
4 " Ego is not an enemy to be broken or demolished, as is often portrayed in spiritual literature. We don't want to get rid of the ego, we want to soften it, make it porous and receptive, so information, thoughts, and compassion flow in and out. A healthy ego allows us to have the strength of our convictions yet be open to others. Psychological literature often refers to ego strength - a sureness about ourselves that rests calmly inside, the will to actualize our dreams, or stand fast to our beliefs without worrying about the consequences.By contrast, the rigid or inflated ego is concrete and dualistic - right-wrong, good-bad, friend-foe...It believes the stories we've made up are reality and doesn't realize that they are only the cover over our essence...To deflect fear, the inflated ego dons a mask and becomes artificial in relationships...This leaves us a stranger to ourself and the person we are meeting. In fact, there has been no authentic connection; it's only our personas that have met. "
― Charlotte Kasl
5 " Life has taught me one supreme lesson. This is that we must—if we are really to live at all, if we are to enjoy the life more abundant promised by the Sages of Wisdom—we must put our convictions into action. My remuneration has been that I have been privileged to act out my faith. "
― Margaret Sanger
6 " We should know what our convictions are and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy conscious or unconscious depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is so will be his ultimate truth. "
7 " Indeed, this life is a test. It is a test of many things - of our convictions and priorities, our faith and our faithfulness, our patience and our resilience, and in the end, our ultimate desires. "
8 " Confronting and undermining the narratives and ideas of extremism must therefore be one of our key tasks. To do this, we must retain the courage of our convictions in the face of extremism. "
9 " We all have our convictions formed by different things, and mine are informed by my faith, they're informed by the Word of God, and I found that to be an anchor for me, a compass and a guide for me. When people start bullying one another and calling each other names for those different convictions, then I think you get into problems. "