quotations about faith
If you are right to believe that religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers. In fact, they should be utterly immoral. Are they? Do members of atheist organizations in the United States commit more than their fair share of violent crimes? Do the members of the National Academy of Sciences, 93 percent of whom do not accept the idea of God, lie and cheat and steal with abandon? We can be reasonably confident that these groups are at least as well behaved as the general population. And yet, athiests are the most reviled minority in the United States.
SAM HARRIS
Letter to a Christian Nation
Faith only shuts the eye of reason, not picks it out.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
Selected Essays Doctrinal & Practical
Faith is not just something you have, it's something you do.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, Dec. 1, 2006
Great is his faith who dares believe his own eyes.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Rod
Faith and Hope must be the wings
To bear me up t' realms sublime!
C. B. LANGSTON
"Experience"
All the answers you may wish for lie within faith, but it demands a complete and incontinent surrender, an immersion as total as any baptism. Indeed baptism is a kind of enactment of the surrender: you bathe in faith, you swim in it, you live by it, surrounded by it, buoyed up by it, engulfed by it. You drown in it, for at times it takes your breath away as entirely as any lungful of water.... All the answers lie in faith; and when you lose your faith you have no choice but to substitute for if a philosophy that deliberately and coldly offers no answers at all.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Human Society in Ethics and Politics
Faith, not Knowledge, builds for every man,
In his own spiritual consciousness,
The ultimate, bright Heaven of his hope,
The realm of joy, the goal of his desire.
No weaker hand can lead the errant soul
From Doubt's dark labyrinth into the light,
And up the starry heights whereon is God.
ANDREW DOWNING
"The Sphinx"
If
faith, about which we are now speaking, were so inscrutable, undistinguishable, and complex a product of our activity as many suppose, we might have expected numerous and most guarded definitions of it in the Scriptures. As faith is the instrument of salvation, we might expect that so doubtful an act of the soul would be set forth by numerous distinctive tests. If the faith of true experience is so utterly diverse from all the believings of mankind about all other things, we might confidently look for certain marks of difference. On the contrary, often as believing, belief, and faith are mentioned in the Scriptures, they are always introduced as if with a presumption that the words are to be taken in their ordinary sense. This gives us much reason to conclude that evangelical faith is a simpler thing, and more familiar to us every day, than the theologians sometimes teach. The fear of such theologians is, lest faith shall be made so easy, and so little diverse from common natural acts of man, that careless and unconverted sinners will flatter themselves that they have faith when they have none. They therefore interpose numberless cautions, to prevent mistake as to faith. They sedulously distinguish various kinds of faith. They refer faith to various so-called faculties or powers of the soul; the nomenclature of which faculties varies with every system. They dissect the act of faith into several parts, nicely following one another, and of which no one must be wanting, or the faith is spurious. And they succeed in hopelessly confounding some, and landing others on the unscriptural conclusion that faith is something different from believing, or accepting truth as true.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
Faith
In proportion to our faith will be our desire for the increase of knowledge.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER
Faith
Faith is like an inner tube shaped by unseen air. In the same way, faith fills our life and shapes each circumstance.
MEL CURTISS
Inkspirations: Devotions for a Lifetime
Faith and optimism are contagious.
THOM S. RAINER
Surprising Insights from the Unchurched
We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time.
DEAN KOONTZ
Brother Odd
Faith means a sanctified imagination, or the imagination applied to spiritual things.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Faith doth both admit and reject disputation with difference.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Faith just doesn't have anything to do with what I'm doing as a scientist. It's nice if you can believe in God, because then you see more of a purpose in things. Even if you don't, though, it doesn't mean that there's no purpose. It doesn't mean that there's no goodness. I think that there's a virtue in being good in and of itself. I think that one can work with the world we have.
LISA RANDALL
Discover Magazine, Jul. 2006
I now understand the need for faith--pure, blind, fly-in-the-face-of-reason faith--as a small life preserver in the world and endless sea of a universe ruled by unfeeling laws and totally indifferent to the small, reasoning beings that inhabit it.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Faith is from within; it is the outbreaking of human spontaneity; it is force of soul, grandeur of sentiment, magnanimity, generosity, courage. Its formulas are naturally unintelligible in their literal tenor; for, otherwise, they would represent that which is scientifically known, and would not be the mere provisional clothing of that which is not objectively given, but subjectively projected from the inmost depth of the soul.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
The Blazing Star
The faith towards God in Christ must be sure and steadfast, that it may solace and make glad the conscience, and put it to rest. When a man has this certainty, he has overcome the serpent; but if he be doubtful of the doctrine, it is for him very dangerous to dispute with the devil.
MARTIN LUTHER
"Of God's Word", Table Talk
Happy the man who lives in mortal flesh a life of faith upon the Son of God; though he dwells not in the gilded palace, he has the Most High for his habitation. Though his food be homely, he fares deliciously every day upon the hidden manna. For, O that noble gift of God! he in whose heart she dwells, is at once possessed of riches, and honors, and pleasures.
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Faith", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity