Film — Animation
"There can be miracles, when you believe
Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill
Who knows what miracles you can achieve
When you believe, somehow you will
You will when you believe!"
Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill
Who knows what miracles you can achieve
When you believe, somehow you will
You will when you believe!"
—Miriam, The Prince of Egypt
"If you have ever cared, do it now. Help us! Tell us you care! Tell your friend next to you that...you care! Tell them how much you care... Tell them again... Say it! Shout it! Help us! ...We care."
—True Heart Bear, Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation
Film — Live-action
Luke: I can't believe it!
Yoda: That is why you fail.
Yoda: That is why you fail.
— The Empire Strikes Back inspires a meme
Comic Books
"The more people believe in something, the more true that thing becomes. The more reality tips in the favor of that belief. What happened in Antarctica was that a group of men managed to make enough people believe in the truth of a flat Earth for it to manifest in reality. If they had been able to bring proof of that back to America, and spread it...the world would change. The moon landing would be a hoax. Every government, every airline, every communications corporation, they would have all been in on it from the beginning. Retroactively, the Earth would always have been flat."
—Lee, The Department of Truth
Literature
"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
—The Minpins by Roald Dahl
"Doubt cannot be in the lexicon of the wizard. The earliest miracle workers, the earliest of our kind, shared these characteristics with the most fervent priests and worshipers. They knew the gods were real, they knew they were watching, acting upon the universe in tangible ways, and that belief, that faith, gave the gods as much power as us. Faith can and did move mountains, did it not? The difference between the gods on high and us was, and still is, that our power comes from within us, while the gods have to go cap in hand, trolling for believers. We believe in ourselves, our abilities, supremely. We have no other option. The best of us are egotistical, because we must be."
—Giles Harmon, Nightwise
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"
—Death, Hogfather
"Many different belief systems powered the revolution of the planets and stars. Wolves would still chase Sol across the sky. Ra would continue his daily journey in his sun barque. Tonatiuh would keep running on his surplus blood from human sacrifices back in the Aztec days. And that other thing—science—would still generate gravity and quantum physics and whatever."
—Apollo, The Hidden Oracle
"Never underestimate the power of thousands of human minds all believing the same thing. They can remake reality. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not."
—Apollo, The Tyrant's Tomb
"You got to understand the god thing. It's not magic. Not exactly. It's about focus. It's about being you, but the you that people believe in. It's about being the concentrated, magnified essence of you. It's about becoming thunder, or the power of a running horse, or wisdom. You take all the belief, all the prayers, and they become a kind of certainty, something that lets you become bigger, cooler, more than human. You crystallize."
— Mr. World/Loki, American Gods
Live-action TV
Brother Alwyn: Faith sustains us in the hour when reason tells us that we cannot continue; that the whole of our lives is without meaning.
Brother Michael: Then why were we born able to reason if reason's useless?
Alwyn: Not useless, but it's also not enough. Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet: you can travel further with both than you can with just one.
Brother Michael: Then why were we born able to reason if reason's useless?
Alwyn: Not useless, but it's also not enough. Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet: you can travel further with both than you can with just one.
—Babylon 5, "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars"
"Mass delusions are as old as I am. I was there when the Martians invaded in 1938. What a panic. Powerful panic. Now there are Starmen waiting in the sky. They believed it was true and it was."
Tabletop games— Media, American Gods (2017), "Lemon Scented You"
"Belief matters more than truth. Every moment, belief in imaginary things alters lives while truth sits unnoticed and waits."
— Hakim, Loreweaver, Magic: The Gathering, Gossamer Phantom
Video games
"A god's power comes directly from belief in it...Religion sounds a lot like politics."
— Atsuro, reviewing over the real plans of the Shomonkai.
"I've seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me."
— The Nameless One, Planescape: Torment
Webcomics
"Please let magic be real, please let magic be real, please let magic be real. I believe that magic is real right now. I believe so hard in its reality that it is becoming slightly less fake before our very eyes. I believe its fakeness was just a lie coughed up from a dark magician's spurious asshole. I believe in fairies. I believe dragons aren't bullshit. I believe heartily in the giggles of all the cherubs in heaven and the metric tonnes of special stardust they consume each day to fuel their laughter. I believe with the conviction of a million frothing zealots in the combined pranks of a billion leprechauns strong, and in the tiny erections they get from playing them."
Minrah: I didn't realize the gods were so dependent on the beliefs of everyday mortals like us.
Thor: Oh, you have no idea. I used to be a ginger until that damn superhero comic book came out.
Thor: Oh, you have no idea. I used to be a ginger until that damn superhero comic book came out.
Web video
"We believe in Santa Christ!"
— Various characters, Kickassia
Nerd: That's unbelievable!
Ryu Hayabusa: With that attitude, you will never succeed!
Ryu Hayabusa: With that attitude, you will never succeed!
Western Animation
"Abracadabra, Abracadee. The key to real magic is my belief in me!"
Real life
"The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it's only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die."
"I asked him, 'Do you believe it's real?' He almost started crying and said, 'Yes, I do think it's real' and I said, 'Then that's all that matters.'"
— Selena Gomez, 2009 D23 Expo, September 16, 2009. note
"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."
