“I think faith in each other is much harder than faith in God or faith in crystals. I very rarely have faith in God; I occasionally have little spasms of it, but they go away, if I think hard enough about it. I am incandescent with rage at the idea of horoscopes and of crystals and of the nonsense of 'New Age', or indeed even more pseudo-scientific things: self-help, and the whole culture of 'searching for answers', when for me, as someone brought up in the unashamed Western tradition of music and poetry and philosophy, all the answers are there in the work that has been done by humanity before us, in literature, in art, in science, in all the marvels that have created this moment now, instead of people looking away. The image to me... is gold does exist, and for 'gold' say 'truth', say 'the answer', say 'love', say 'justice', say anything: it does exist. But the only way in this world you can achieve gold is to be incredibly intelligent about geology, to learn what mankind has learnt, to learn where it might lie, and then break your fingers and blister your skin in digging for it, and then sweat and sweat in a forge, and smelt it. And you will have gold, but you will never have it by closing your eyes and wishing for it. No angel will lean out of the bar of heaven and drop down sheets of gold for you. And we live in a society in which people believe they will. But the real answer, that there is gold, and that all you have to do is try and understand the world enough to get down into the muck of it, and you will have it, you will have truth, you will have justice, you will have understanding, but not by wishing for it.”
From Radio 4's Bookclub http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f8l3b
2000s
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Stephen Fry 93
English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist 1957Related quotes
The Tonight Show Featuring Jimmy Fallon http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/carly-fiorina-talks-trump-religion-rocks-fallon-tonight-show-n431346 (21 September 2015).
2010s, 2015, The Tonight Show Featuring Jimmy Fallon (September 2015)
Source: The Dresden Files, Changes (2010), Chapter 26
Source: God's Problem (2008), Ch. 1: 'Suffering and a Crisis of Faith', p. 1
About being a Christian
From an interview with the Sunday Times, "The eyebrows have it."
Page 34
Describing his first healing service, healing 15 people after delivering a sermon unprepared.
The Complete Story: A New Biography on the Apostle of Faith By Julian Wilson http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e2RWZpOHfmoC|Wigglesworth:
“I will be a true and faithful prime minister, so help me God.”
Moeketsi Majoro (2020) cited in: " Moeketsi Majoro sworn in as Lesotho’s new prime minister https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/5/20/moeketsi-majoro-sworn-in-as-lesothos-new-prime-minister" in Aljazeera, 20 May 2020.
Statement made during the prime minister swearing-in ceremony of Moeketsi Majoro at the royal palace of King Letsie III, 20 May 2020.
