Confidence | Kevin Barrett's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Confidence’

I Wish I Had This Confidence

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged Ability, American Politics, Confidence, Literature, Philosophy, Quotes, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on April 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »

I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.

— William O. Douglas

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Click here (2 April) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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The Faith Hypothesis

Posted in Faith, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Atheism, Carl Sagan, Confidence, Faith, God, Philosophy, Quotes, Religion on June 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Those who raise questions about the God hypothesis and the soul hypothesis are by no means all atheists. An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

— Carl Sagan

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Click here (5 June) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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It Starts With A Dream

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Belief, Confidence, Doubters, Dreams, Hard Work, Limits, Michael Phelps, Mistakes, Obstacles, Philosophy, Plans, Quotes, Trust on February 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »

You dream. You plan. You reach. There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, with belief, with confidence and trust in yourself and those around you, there are no limits.

— Michael Phelps

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Click here (12 February) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Fear, Favor, Joy

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Arthur Ashe, Confidence, Elon Musk, Fear, Hard Work, Hunger, Joy, Limits, Odds, Opponents, Philosophy, Queen Latifah, Quotes, Standards on February 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I’ve always approached things with hunger and just enough fear. Plenty of confidence, you know, but just enough fear to work extra hard. Paralyzing fear does nothing, but the kind of fear that makes you nervous enough to really be aware and focused? I like that kind of fear.

— Queen Latifah

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

— Elon Musk

You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.

— Arthur Ashe

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Click here (6 February) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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A Still Unproven Postulate

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged American Politics, Common Sense, Confidence, Democracy, Government, Judgement, Maturity, Philosophy, Quotes, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, The First Amendment, Winston Churchill on October 4, 2023| 3 Comments »

The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy.

— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

[To quote Winston Churchill: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” — kmab]

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Click here (4 October) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Or Failure (See: #45, For Example)

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged #45 - The Loser, Confidence, Failure, Ignorance, Life, Mark Twain, Needs, Philosophy, Politics, Success on April 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

— Mark Twain

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Click here (3 April) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Meet Unexpected Success

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Confidence, Dreams, Endeavors, Henry David Thoreau, Imagination, Life, Philosophy, Quotes, Success, Time on December 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with the success unexpected in common hours.

— Henry David Thoreau

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Click here (19 December) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Waiting For 20 January 2021

Posted in Faith, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged Confidence, Courage, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fear, Horror, Philosophy, Quotes, Strength on November 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You MUST do the thing that you think you cannot do.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

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Click here (10 November) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Show Righteousness, Not Fear

Posted in Faith, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged Bill Clinton, Christians, Compromise, Confidence, Donald Trump, E. Jean Carroll, Eric Metaxas, Evangelicals, Faith, Fear, Hillary Clinton, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Religious Leadership, Republicans, Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials, Southern Baptist Convention, The Evangelical Republic of Fear, Time Magazine, time.com on October 25, 2019| Leave a Comment »

On June 21, the writer E. Jean Carroll came forward with a vivid and disturbing claim that Donald Trump raped her in a department store in the 1990s. She is the 22nd woman to allege that Trump committed acts of sexual misconduct. These claims are more extensive and more corroborated than the accusations against Bill Clinton.

It’s worth contrasting Trump, who denied Carroll’s claim (as well as his other accusers’), with Clinton because his scandals helped spur the Southern Baptist Convention in 1998 to issue its seminal “Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials.” That document’s key statement was ominous and unequivocal: “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”

The relentless drumbeat of claims against Trump – combined with the clear moral declarations of the past – have caused millions of Americans to look at their evangelical fellow citizens and ask, simply: Why? Why have you abandoned your previous commitment to political character to embrace Donald Trump?

Part of the explanation is undeniably basic partisanship and ambition. White evangelicals are largely Republican, and they’re generally going to vote for Republicans. And proximity to power has always had its attractions for religious charlatans of all stripes. But I’d suggest the real reason for the breadth and depth of evangelical support is deeper and – perversely – even more destructive to its religious witness.

That reason is fear.

Talk to engaged evangelicals, and fear is all too often a dominant theme of their political life. The church is under siege from a hostile culture. Religious institutions are under legal attack from progressives. The left wants nuns to facilitate access to abortifacients and contraceptives, it wants Christian adoption agencies to compromise their conscience or close, and it even casts into doubt the tax exemptions of religious education institutions if they adhere to traditional Christian sexual ethics.

These issues are legally important, and there are reasons for evangelicals to be concerned. But there is no reason for evangelicals to abandon long-held principles to behave like any other political-interest group.

Instead, the evangelical church is called to be a source of light in a darkening world. It is not given the luxury of fear-based decision making. Indeed, of all the groups in American life who believe they have the least to fear from American politics, Christians should top the list. The faithful should reject fear.

This is made plain to young Christians from the early days of Sunday school. There, many millions of young believers are taught the biblical verse: “For God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

But in 2016, something snapped. I saw Christian men and women whom I’ve known and respected for years respond with raw fear at the very idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency. They believed she was going to place the church in mortal danger. The Christian writer Eric Metaxas wrote that if Hillary won, America’s chance to have a “Supreme Court that values the Constitution” will be “gone.” “Not for four years, not for eight,” he said, “but forever.”

That wasn’t faith speaking. They were the words of fearful men grasping at fading influence by clinging to a man whose daily life mocks the very values that Christians seek to advance.

But why? The American evangelical church isn’t so weak that it needs Trump’s version of secular salvation. The early persecuted church would be stunned at the modern American church’s immense political strength. It has become so strong that it exercises veto power over the political prospects of any Republican nominee.

Yet the church is acting as if it needs Trump to protect it. That’s not courageous. It’s repulsive. And so long as this fear continues, expect the church’s witness to degrade further. In seeking protection from its perceived enemies, the church has lost its way.

It’s time for evangelicals to exercise their political veto power. America’s conservative people of faith should seek a primary challenger to Trump and send a message to the GOP that it will not compromise any longer. And it should do so from a position of confidence – and faith.

— David French
From his opinion / editorial: “The Evangelical Republic of Fear“
Appearing in: Time Magazine, dtd: 8 July 2019
Also, found online at: https://time.com/5615617/why-evangelicals-support-trump/

[I make no claim to ownership of this editorial. It belongs to either Time or to the author. I normally only present excerpts from articles / editorials because I am trying to exercise “fair use” while giving full credit to the owner and / or original source. In this (rare) case, the editorial is presented in its entirety because the whole is FAR greater than any of its parts. As always, I encourage readers to visit the original source. I subscribe to the “hard-copy” version of Time. — kmab]

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Click here (25 October) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Our Confident New President

Posted in Politics, Quotes, tagged #DumbDonald, Charles Darwin, Confidence, Ignorance, Knowledge, Politics, Quotes, The Descent Of Man on July 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

— Charles Darwin
From his book: “The Descent of Man” (1871)

[Still / even after almost six months in office… — kmab]

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Click here (20 July) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Kindness

Posted in My Journal, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Confidence, Kindness, Lao-Tzu, Love, My Journal, Philosophy, Profoundness, Quotes on June 10, 2017| 4 Comments »

Kindness in words creates confidence, kindness in thinking creates profoundness, kindness in giving creates love.

— Lao-Tzu

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Click here (10 June) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Dreaming

Posted in My Journal, Quotes, tagged Confidence, Dreams, Fredrick S. Perls, My Journal, Quotes on January 25, 2016| Leave a Comment »

We are so much more than we believe that we are in our wildest dreams.

— Fredrick S. Perls

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Click here (25 January) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Directions Please

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Confidence, Direction, Henry David Thoreau, Imagination, Life, Philosophy, Quotes on April 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

— Henry David Thoreau

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Click here (18 April) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.