quotations about conviction
A person who holds strong convictions might appear inflexible, impolite, or exceptionally obtuse, when they are merely direct.
KILROY J. OLDSTER
Dead Toad Scrolls
It may take longer to find deep convictions if we are fixated on avoiding pain instead of finding something worth enduring pain for.
MICHAEL BRENT JONES
Conflict and Connection
It wasn't the clothes that made this face, this woman, different. It was something behind her eyes, something in the set of her jaw--a hope or belief or conviction--that a life is not a thing unalterable.... I suppose it was something like faith.
TARA WESTOVER
Educated
People want to follow someone with convictions, not questions. Smooth eloquence can never take the place of unwavering belief.
RANDY SINGER
Fatal Convictions
In immediate feeling, one human being never understands the other. As soon as something happens to him personally, he understands everything differently. When he himself is suffering, he does not understand another's suffering, and when he himself is happy he still does not understand it. Immediate feeling selfishly understands everything in relation to itself and therefore is in the disunion of double-mindedness with all others, because there can be unity only in the soundly understood equality of sincerity, and in selfish shortsightedness his conviction is continually being changed, or it is chance that it is not changed, since the reason for this is that by chance his life is not touched by any change. But such firmness of conviction is a delusion on the part of the pampered, because a conviction is not firm when everything forces it upon one, as it were, and makes it firm, but its firmness manifests itself in the ups and downs of everything. Rarely, indeed, does a person's life avoid all changes, and in the changes the conviction of immediate feeling is a delusion, the momentary impression blown up into a view of life as a whole.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits
What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you're advancing. If you don't you're as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn't there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
attributed, Cosmopolitan, 1982
Every good man in this world has convictions about right and wrong. They are his soul's riches, his spiritual gold. When his conduct is at variance with these, he knows that it is a departure, a falling; and this is a simple and clear matter. If falling were all that ever happened to a good man, all his days would be a simple matter of striving and repentance. But it is not all. There come to him certain junctures, crises, when life, like a highwayman, springs upon him, demanding that he stand and deliver his convictions in the name of some righteous cause, bidding him do evil that good may come.
OWEN WISTER
The Virginian
With the power of conviction, there is no sacrifice.
PAT BENATAR
Invincible
Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartur
It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
No man knows the genuineness of his convictions until he has sacrificed something for them.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
When you take a stand out of deep conviction, people know. They may not even agree, but they ask, "Do I want someone who is willing to take a hard stand and someone I can trust to do that when the chips are down?" They want that.
BARBARA BOXER
attributed, Women's Quotations for Successful Living
Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face.
HONORE DE BALZAC
attributed, Treasures of Love and Inspiration
Conviction is like a burning glass, that gathers all the beams into one point or centre, and fastens them upon the soul, and so kindles and inflames it.
JAMES FORD
The Gospel According to St. John
To have religion upon authority and not upon conviction is like a finger watch--to be set forward or backward as he pleases that has it in keeping.
WILLIAM PENN
The Witness of William Penn
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Second Coming
Follow your dreams with determination and conviction until they become true.
STEVEN REDHEAD
Life Is Simply a Game
My conviction ... gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
E.M. FORSTER
Howards End
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Human, All Too Human
Our consciences are littered like an old attic with the junk of sheer conviction.
WILFORD O. CROSS
Prologue to Ethics