belief vs principle

belief

noun
  • One's religious or moral convictions. 

  • Mental acceptance of a claim as true. 

  • Religious faith. 

  • The quality or state of believing. 

  • Faith or trust in the reality of something; often based upon one's own reasoning, trust in a claim, desire of actuality, and/or evidence considered. 

  • Something believed. 

principle

noun
  • Moral rule or aspect. 

  • A fundamental essence, particularly one producing a given quality. 

  • A rule used to choose among solutions to a problem. 

  • A rule or law of nature, or the basic idea on how the laws of nature are applied. 

  • Bernoulli's Principle 

  • An original faculty or endowment. 

  • A fundamental assumption or guiding belief. 

  • A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause. 

verb
  • To equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet or rule of conduct. 

How often have the words belief and principle occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )