People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.

When it comes to drugs, most people have beliefs that have no foundation in evidence.

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

You have a minority of activists with incredible power in society who are treating their own extremist views and presenting them as though we've reached an established consensus in society, and it's not true.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

there are bad people in this world, but mostly, there are just people who don’t know.

people are rarely persuaded by arguments, but more often by experiences.

To those who have an active belief, reasoned proofs are needless and probably useless.

To believe something strongly when it is clearly hard to define and prove, and has not been proven, is to be prejudiced.

Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum.

The prejudices of the people are far stronger than those of the privileged classes; they are far more vulgar; and they are far more dangerous, because they are apt to run counter to scientific conclusions.

They do not feel bound by the customary rules of conduct and have not yet found an inner law that would replace them.

Ninety-five per cent of modern people have no ideas or convictions of their own. Five per cent have views and convictions but again ninety-five per cent of these do not dare to stand up for them. There are five per cent of five per cent who have courage and convictions. These make history for good or evil.

Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.