"As being is to become, so is truth to belief" (Plato,"Timaeus", cca. 360 BC)
"Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible. Else he would give up investigating. " (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Maxims and Reflections", 1829)
"A belief in a proposition is a controlled and contented habit of acting in ways that will be productive of desired results only if the proposition is true; An affirmation is an act of an utterer of a proposition to an interpreter, and consists, in the first place, in the deliberate exercise, in uttering the proposition, of a force tending to determine a belief in it in the mind of the interpreter." (Charles S Peirce, "New Elements" ["Kaina stoiceia"], 1904)
"The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity." (William James, "What Pragmatism Means", 1907)
"In fact, the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new." (Bertrand Russell,"Our Knowledge of the External World", 1914)
"Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; [...]" (Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World", 1914)
"As words are not the things we speak about, and structure is the only link between them, structure becomes the only content of knowledge. If we gamble on verbal structures that have no observable empirical structures, such gambling can never give us any structural information about the world. Therefore such verbal structures are structurally obsolete, and if we believe in them, they induce delusions or other semantic disturbances." (Alfred Korzybski, "Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics", 1933)
"It happens at times that a person believes that he has a world-view, but that there is yet one particular phenomenon that is of such a nature that it baffles the understanding, and that he explains differently and attempts to ignore in order not to harbor the thought that this phenomenon might overthrow the whole view, or that his reflection does not possess enough courage and resolution to penetrate the phenomenon with his world-view." (Søren Kierkegaard, 1938)
"In every writer on philosophy there is a concealed metaphysic, usually unconscious; even if his subject is metaphysics, he is almost certain to have an uncritically believed system which underlies his specific arguments." (Bertrand Russell, "Dewey’s New Logic" [in"The Philosophy of John Dewey", ed. by Paul A Schilpp & Lewis E Hahn, 1939])
"Classes and concepts may, however, also be conceived as real objects, namely classes as 'pluralities of things' or as structures consisting of a plurality of things and concepts as the properties and relations of things existing independently of our definitions and constructions. It seems to me that the assumption of such objects is quite as legitimate as the assumption of physical bodies and there is quite as much reason to believe in their existence. They are in the same sense necessary to obtain a satisfactory system of mathematics as physical bodies are necessary for a satisfactory theory of our sense perceptions." (Kurt Gödel, "The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell", 1944)
"Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent. We look at the symbols, we hope to read them, we hope for sharing and communication." (Muriel Rukeyser, "The Life of Poetry", 1949)
"As a set of cognitive beliefs, religion is a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability." (Sidney Hook, The Partisan Review, 1950)
"For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination." (Maxwell Maltz, "Psycho-Cybernetics", 1960)
"Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis." (Emil Cioran, "History and Utopia", 1960)
"A world view is not merely a philosophical by-product of each culture, like a shadow, but the very skeleton of concrete cognitive assumptions on which the flesh of customary behavior is hung. World view, accordingly, may be expressed, more or less systematically in cosmology, philosophy, ethics, religious ritual, scientific belief, and so on, but it is implicit in almost every act. In Parsonian terms, it constitutes the set of cognitive orientations of the members of a society." (Anthony F C Wallace, "Culture and Personality", 1961)
"All our language is composed of brief little dreams; and the wonderful thing is that we sometimes make of them strangely accurate and marvelously reasonable thoughts. […] What should we be without the help of that which does not exist? Very little. And our unoccupied minds would languish if fables, mistaken notions, abstractions, beliefs, and monsters, hypotheses, and the so-called problems of metaphysics did not people with beings and objectless images our natural depths and darkness. Myths are the souls of our actions and our loves. We cannot act without moving towards a phantom. We can love only what we create." (Paul Valéry,"The Outlook for Intelligence", 1962)
"There are metaphysical problems, which cannot be disposed of by declaring them meaningless. For, as I have repeatedly said, they are ‘beyond physics’ indeed and demand an act of faith. We have to accept this fact to be honest. There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that ‘belief’ must be discarded and replaced by 'the scientific method'." (Max Born,"Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance", 1964)
"The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world." (Max Born, "Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance", 1964)
"There are metaphysical problems, which cannot be disposed of by declaring them meaningless. For, as I have repeatedly said, they are ‘beyond physics’ indeed and demand an act of faith. We have to accept this fact to be honest. There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that ‘belief’ must be discarded and replaced by 'the scientific method'." (Max Born, "Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance", 1964)
"The fact that theories are not subject to absolute and final proof has led to a serious vulgar misapprehension. Theory is contrasted with fact as if the two had no relationship or were antitheses: 'Evolution is only a theory, not a fact'. Of course, theories are not facts. They are generalizations about facts and explanations of facts, based on and tested by facts. As such they may be just as certain - merit just as much confidence - as what are popularly termed 'facts'. Belief that the sun will rise tomorrow is the confident application of a generalization. The theory that life has evolved is founded on much more evidence than supports the generalization that the sun rises every day. In the vernacular, we are justified in calling both 'facts'." (George G Simpson, Life: An Introduction to Biology, 1965)
"The higher we climb the ladder of epistemic abstraction the less we ourselves appear in our picture of the world and the better we are at explaining our own experiences. On the other hand, by remaining close to the senses we will not transcend superficial, anthropocentric world views. In short, although experience is a test of our theories it is not the stuff our theories are made of or even the referent of physical theories: human experience proper is the subject of nonphysical sciences like psychology. These platitudes had to be stated on account of the widespread belief that in physics only observational predicates matter - a belief inherited from philosophies at variance with science." (Mario Bunge, "Foundations of Physics", 1967)
"A schema, then is a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory. There are schemata representing our knowledge about all concepts; those underlying objects, situations, events, sequences of events, actions and sequences of actions. A schema contains, as part of its specification, the network of interrelations that is believed to normally hold among the constituents of the concept in question. A schema theory embodies a prototype theory of meaning. That is, inasmuch as a schema underlying a concept stored in memory corresponds to the meaning of that concept, meanings are encoded in terms of the typical or normal situations or events that instantiate that concept." (David E Rumelhart, "Schemata: The building blocks of cognition", 1980)
"Once we have accepted a configuration of schemata, the schemata themselves provide a richness that goes far beyond our observations. […] In fact, once we have determined that a particular schema accounts for some event, we may not be able to determine which aspects of our beliefs are based on direct sensory information and which are merely consequences of our interpretation." (David E Rumelhart, "Schemata: The building blocks of cognition", 1980)
"The degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system [...] simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems." (Jerry Fodor, "Modularity of Mind", 1983)
"A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least." (Jacques Barzun, "The Culture We Deserve", 1989)
"It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief." (Alan D Foster, "Cyber Way", 1990)
"A model can not be proved to be correct; at best it can only be found to be reasonably consistant and not to contradict some of our beliefs of what reality is." (Richard W Hamming, "The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers", 1991)
"The leading edge of growth of intelligence is at the cultural and societal level. It is like a mind that is struggling to wake up. This is necessary because the most difficult problems we face are now collective ones. They are caused by complex global interactions and are beyond the scope of individuals to understand and solve. Individual mind, with its isolated viewpoints and narrow interests, is no longer enough." (Jeff Wright, "Basic Beliefs", [email] 1995)
"The mental model, in turn, can be considered as a syntactic language of thought whose semantic interpretation is provided by the actual world. In this sense, a person's beliefs are true to the extent that they correspond to the world." (William J Rapaport, "Understanding Understanding: Syntactic Semantics and Computational Cognition", Philosophical Perspectives Vol. 9, 1995)
"Beliefs are those ideas we take as true and use to guide our actions. We all have beliefs about what sort of people we are and what we are capable of. These beliefs act as permissions for or limitations on what we do. When we believe something is possible, we will try it; if we believe it impossible, we will not." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)
"People respond to their experience, not to reality itself. We do not know what reality is. Our senses, beliefs, and past experience give us a map of the world from which to operate." (Joseph O’Connor, "Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People", 1998)
"To begin with, we must understand that any mindset consists of mental models, or concepts, that influence our interpretation of situations and predispose us to certain responses. These models, which are replete with beliefs and assumptions, thus strongly determine the way we understand the world and act in it. The irony is, they become so ingrained in us, as tendencies and predispositions, that we seldom pay attention to them." (Stephen G Haines, "The Manager's Pocket Guide to Strategic and Business Planning", 1998)
"Probability is not about the odds, but about the belief in the existence of an alternative outcome, cause, or motive." (Nassim N Taleb, "Fooled by Randomness", 2001)
"The danger arises when a culture takes its own story as the absolute truth, and seeks to impose this truth on others as the yardstick of all knowledge and belief." (F David Peat, "From Certainty to Uncertainty", 2002)
"We must begin by distinguishing between visual mental imagery and visual perception: Visual perception occurs while a stimulus is being viewed, and includes functions such as visual recognition (i. e., registering that a stimulus is familiar) and identification (i. e., recalling the name, context, or other information associated with the object). Two types of mechanisms are used in visual perception: ‘bottom-up’ mechanisms are driven by the input from the eyes; in contrast, ‘top-down’ mechanisms make use of stored information (such as knowledge, belief, expectations, and goals). Visual mental imagery is a set of representations that gives rise to the experience of viewing a stimulus in the absence of appropriate sensory input. In this case, information in memory underlies the internal events that produce the experience. Unlike afterimages, mental images are relatively prolonged." (Stephen M Kosslyn, "Mental images and the brain", Cognitive Neuropsychology 22, 2005)
"Context is not as simple as being in a different space [...] context includes elements like our emotions, recent experiences, beliefs, and the surrounding environment - each element possesses attributes, that when considered in a certain light, informs what is possible in the discussion." (George Siemens, "Knowing Knowledge", 2006)
"Our generational perspective contributes to the mental models we hold about ourselves, the world, and the way things ‘should’ be. These beliefs create blind spots that can become our undoing as we pursue our values and seek to accomplish our goals. Likewise, they can have a powerful effect on our culture." (Deborah Gilburg,"Empowering Multigenerational Collaboration in the Workplace", The Systems Thinker Vol. 18 No. 4, 2007)
"Mental models reflect the beliefs, values, and assumptions that we personally hold, and they underlie our reasons for doing things the way we do." (Kambiz E Maani & Robert Y Cavana,"Systems Methodology", The Systems Thinker Vol. 18 No. 8, 2007)
"Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities." (Tom G Palmer, Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, 2009)
"System dynamics models have little impact unless they change the way people perceive a situation. A model must help to organize information in a more understandable way. A model should link the past to the present by showing how present conditions arose, and extend the present into persuasive alternative futures under a variety of scenarios determined by policy alternatives. In other words, a system dynamics model, if it is to be effective, must communicate with and modify the prior mental models. Only people's beliefs - that is, their mental models - will determine action. Computer models must relate to and improve mental models if the computer models are to fill an effective role." (Jay W Forrester, "Modeling for What Purpose?", The Systems Thinker Vol. 24 (2), 2013)
"The search for better numbers, like the quest for new technologies to improve our lives, is certainly worthwhile. But the belief that a few simple numbers, a few basic averages, can capture the multifaceted nature of national and global economic systems is a myth. Rather than seeking new simple numbers to replace our old simple numbers, we need to tap into both the power of our information age and our ability to construct our own maps of the world to answer the questions we need answering." (Zachary Karabell, "The Leading Indicators: A short history of the numbers that rule our world", 2014)
"Context is not as simple as being in a different space [...] context includes elements like our emotions, recent experiences, beliefs, and the surrounding environment - each element possesses attributes, that when considered in a certain light, informs what is possible in the discussion." (George Siemens, "Knowing Knowledge", 2006)
"A general limitation of the human mind is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have changed. Once you adopt a new view of the world (or any part of it), you immediately lose much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed." (Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", 2011)
"Mental models and rules are intimately intertwined, since the models often suggest clear rules for societies to follow. Religions are more than theories; they are prescriptive moral codes that seek to enforce rules on their followers. They, like the rules they enjoin, are invested with considerable emotional meaning and therefore are believed for intrinsic reasons and not simply because they are accurate or useful. While religious beliefs cannot be verified, they are also difficult to falsify. All of this reinforces the fundamental conservatism of human societies, because mental models of reality once adopted are hard to change in the light of new evidence that they are not working." (Francis Fukuyama, "The Origins of Political Order", 2011)
"The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little." (Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", 2011)
"A belief model is clung to not because it is 'correct' - there is no way to know this - but rather because it has worked in the past and must cumulate a record of failure before it is worth discarding. In general, there may be a constant slow turnover of hypotheses acted upon. One could speak of this as a system of temporarily fulfilled expectations - beliefs or models or hypotheses that are temporarily fulfilled (though not perfectly), which give way to different beliefs or hypotheses when they cease to be fulfilled." (W Brian Arthur, "Complexity and the Economy", 2015)
"Learning is a dynamic event and so the belief that learning is primarily about the acquisition of facts is fundamentally flawed - the acquisition and manipulation of data is at best a prerequisite to learning. Real learning involves acquiring knowledge and understanding." (William Byers, "Deep Thinking: What Mathematics Can Teach Us About the Mind", 2015)
"Our beliefs are based on our experience, which gives us a very incomplete picture of the world, and it's easy to jump to false conclusions." (Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm", 2015)
"We carry out localized deductions based on our current hypotheses and act on them. As feedback from the environment comes in, we may strengthen or weaken our beliefs in our current hypotheses, discarding some when they cease to perform, and replacing them as needed with new ones. In other words, when we cannot fully reason or lack full definition of the problem, we use simple models to fill the gaps in our understanding. Such behavior is inductive." (W Brian Arthur, "Complexity and the Economy", 2015)
"A worldview consists of observations of the individual and other people with respect to the self, time and space, the natural and the supernatural and the sacred and profane. […] Beliefs about the world do not reside in the human mind in chaotic disorder; rather they form a latent system. A worldview cannot, however, be viewed as a well-organised network of cognitive models or a static collection of values; instead it should be regarded as the product of a process shaped by historical, cultural and social perspectives and contexts." (Helena Helve,"A longitudinal perspective on worldviews, values and identities", 2016)
