Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
Be careful in dealing with a man who cares nothing for comfort or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous uncomfortable enemy, because his body, which you can always conquer, gives you little purchase upon his soul.
The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.
Belief is harder to shake than knowledge.
If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and re-assert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.
Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?
Faith does not ask for possible things; it demands impossible.
You need conviction in your own beliefs, and the willingness to ignore others naysaying.
I will not hesitate. Not for a second.
. . . the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.
There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk. Only brigands are convinced-of what? That they must succeed. And so they do succeed.
I had been right I was still right I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn t done that. I hadn t done this thing and I had done another. And so?
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
Stubbornness is a virtue if you are right.
No idea is ever dead until those who believe in it say it's dead.
I firmly believe we can make our own miracles if we believe strongly enough in ourselves and our mission on earth.
All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.
Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change
Steadfastness in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say the wind never blows upon it.
Time that weakens all things else has but strengthened the impregnable position of the believer's faith and hope and confidence. And as, year by year, the tree adds another ring to its circumference, every age has added the testimony of its events to this great truth. "The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, but the word of the Lord shall endure forever.
For, dear me, why abandon a belief, Merely because it ceases to be true, Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt, It will turn true again, for so it goes.
The secret to doing anything is believing that you can do it. Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.
Never, for fear of feeble man, restrain your witness.
So, to get to play somebody who was insisting on it, in spite of all the evidence was very liberating and exciting. It went quite deep. I suppose I reference a kindness and humility that I would have seen in my parents' generation, a little bit more than now.
