The Marketing Bureau

Beliefs. The fourth in a series of collections of useable quotations to make you look really smart in your next presentation or report.

I believe 'credibility' is one of the biggest issues yet to be addressed by Internet advertisers. Everyone has their eye on 'privacy' as a critical concern, but credibility will be far more enabling or disabling to website profitability. A company can have a web presence and, unless the brand name is familiar, consumers have no way of knowing whether it's a big company, a small company, an honest company, or a single scoundrel. I may be worried about my personal data being disclosed in violation of my privacy, but I'm far more concerned about whether or not the person or company with whom I'm dealing is reputable. Can I believe their claims? Will I have a recourse if something is wrong with the merchandise? Credibility no longer is strictly a brick-and-mortar issue. I can't judge someone by their place of business, when I conduct that business on the Internet. I can't grasp a hand and look into their eyes to judge their veracity. Credibility is a huge issue.

JEF I. RICHARDS

If there are signs that Americans bow to the gods of advertising, there are equally indications that people find the gods ridiculous. It is part of the popular culture that advertisements are silly.

MICHAEL SCHUDSON,

Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.
FRANCIS BACON

No more important duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theatre of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.
EDWIN H. CHAPIN

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
G.K. CHESTERTON

This is the lesson: Never give in… never, never, never, never… in nothing, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour or good taste.
WINSTON CHURCHILL

All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE

Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.
DINAH MULOCK CRAIK

Unless the man who works in an office is able to sell himself and his ideas, unless he has the power to convince others of the soundness of his convictions, he can never achieve his goal. He may have the best ideas in the world, he may have plans which would revolutionize entire industries. But, unless he can persuade others that his ideas are good, he will never get the chance to put them into effect. Stripped of non-essentials, all business activity is a sales battle. And everyone in business must be a salesman.
ROBERT E.M. COWIE

A firm belief attracts. They come out iv' holes in th' ground an' cracks in th' wall to support belief, but they run away fr'm doubt.
FINLEY PETER DUNNE

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
WILLIAM FAULKNER

At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
JAMES A. GARFIELD

The will to believe is perhaps the most powerful but certainly the most dangerous human attribute.
JOHN P. GRIER

Men are tattooed with their special beliefs like so many South Sea Islanders; but a real human heart with divine love in it beats with the same glow under all the patterns of all earth's thousand tribes.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Too few have the courage of my convictions.
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
WILLIAM JAMES

In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
WILLIAM JAMES

The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions, decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below.
ERIC A. JOHNSTON

Believe that you have it, and you have it.
LATIN PROVERB

That which you vividly imagine, sincerely believe, ardently desire and enthusiastically act upon will inevitably come to pass.
WILLIAM R. LUCAS

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly bigger man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.
GEN. PEYTON C. MARCH

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE

When you affirm big, believe big, and pray big, big things happen.
NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

The man who believes he can do it is probably right, and so is the man who believes he can't.
LAURENCE J. PETER

Remember that what you believe will depend very much upon what you are.
NOAH PORTER

To have integrity the individual cannot merely be a weathervane turning briskly with every doctrinal wind that blows. He must possess key loyalties and key convictions, which can serve as a basis of judgment and a standard of action.
JOHN STUDEBAKER

When the human race has once acquired a superstition nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
MARK TWAIN

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now; and this thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.
F.D. VAN AMBURGH

When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me.
JOHN WESLEY

Believe things, rather than man.
BENJAMIN WHICHOTE