quotations about faith
I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
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The Book of Lies
The struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.
RONALD REAGAN
speech for National Association of Evangelicals, March 8, 1983
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
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 is a gift of God, which man can neither give nor take away by promise of rewards or menace of torture.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Scepticism has never founded empires, established principles, or changed the world's heart. The great doers of history have always been men of faith.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
To follow, under all circumstances, the highest promptings within you; to be always true to the divine self; to rely upon the inward Voice, the inward Light, and to pursue your purpose with a fearless and restful heart, believing that the future will yield unto you the need of every thought and effort; knowing that the laws of the universe can never fail, and that your own will come back to you with mathematical exactitude -- this is faith and the living of faith.
JAMES ALLEN
Morning and Evening Thoughts
Faith may have removed mountains way off somewhere, a long time ago, but it won't remove a wart at home this week.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart--in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
A faith is something you die for; a doctrine is something you kill for: there is all the difference in the world.
TONY BENN
The Observer, April 16, 1989
I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain,
And troubles swarm like bees about a hive;
I shall believe the heights for which I strive
Are only reached by anguish and by pain;
And though I groan and tremble with my crosses,
I yet shall see, through my severest losses,
The greater gain.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Faith"
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
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
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
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
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
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