"The Holy Dimension", p. 338
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: There is neither advance nor service without faith. Nobody can rationally explain why he should sacrifice his life and his happiness for the sake of the good. The conviction that I must obey the ethical imperatives is not derived from logical argument but originates from an intuitive certitude, in a certitude of faith.
There is no conspiracy against reason, no random obstinacy, no sluggish inertia of mind or smug self-assurance entrenched behind the walls of believing. Faith does not detach a man from thinking, it does not suspend reason. It is opposed not to knowledge but to backwardness and dullness, to indifferent aloofness to the essence of living. … It is a distortion to regard reason and faith as alternatives. Reason is a necessary coefficient of faith. Faith without explication by reason is mute, reason without faith is deaf. There can be a true symbiosis of reason and faith.
The Secret Knowledge
“Our course of advance … is neither a straight line nor a curve. It is a series of dots and dashes.”
Other writings, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (1928)
Context: Our course of advance... is neither a straight line nor a curve. It is a series of dots and dashes. Progress comes per saltum, by successive compromises between extremes, compromises often … between "positivism and idealism". The notion that a jurist can dispense with any consideration as to what the law ought to be arises from the fiction that the law is a complete and closed system, and that judges and jurists are mere automata to record its will or phonographs to pronounce its provisions.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 221.
Statement (April 1936), quoted in Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe 1914-1940 (London: Arnold, 1995), p. 182.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
Original text: À côté de ces hommes religieux, j'en découvre d'autres dont les regards sont tournés vers la terre plutôt que vers le ciel ; partisans de la liberté, non seulement parce qu'ils voient en elle l'origine des plus nobles vertus, mais surtout parce qu'ils la considèrent comme la source des plus grands biens, ils désirent sincèrement assurer son empire et faire goûter aux hommes ses bienfaits : je comprends que ceux-là vont se hâter d'appeler la religion à leur aide, car ils doivent savoir qu'on ne peut établir le règne de la liberté sans celui des mœurs, ni fonder les mœurs sans les croyances ; mais ils ont aperçu la religion dans les rangs de leurs adversaires, c'en est assez pour eux : les uns l'attaquent, et les autres n'osent la défendre.
Introduction.
Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)
Context: By the side of these religious men I discern others whose looks are turned to the earth more than to Heaven; they are the partisans of liberty, not only as the source of the noblest virtues, but more especially as the root of all solid advantages; and they sincerely desire to extend its sway, and to impart its blessings to mankind. It is natural that they should hasten to invoke the assistance of religion, for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of their adversaries, and they inquire no further; some of them attack it openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it.
Jace and Clary, pg. 306
The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)
But I am a Jew and glad to belong to the Jewish people, though I do not regard it in any way as chosen.
Letter to Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, 3 [5] April 1920, as quoted in Alice Calaprice, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein (2010), p. 195; citing Israelitisches Wochenblatt, 42 September 1920, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 7, Doc. 37, and Vol. 9, Doc 368.
1920s
