Quotes about faith
page 23

Swami Shraddhanand photo
Aldo Capitini photo
Edward Hopper photo
Alexander Maclaren photo

“That is faith, cleaving to Christ, twining round Him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its support.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 228.

John Ruysbroeck photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Bernard Lewis photo
John Gray photo

“Echoing the Christian faith in free will, humanists hold that human beings are – or may someday become – free to choose their lives. They forget that the self that does the choosing has not itself been chosen.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Beyond the Last Thought: Freud's cigars and the long way round to Nirvana (p. 86)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Jean Metzinger photo
Menno Simons photo

“God's language is action. For God, faith is a verb.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 41

Peter Mere Latham photo

“Faith and knowledge lean largely upon each other in the practice of medicine.”

Peter Mere Latham (1789–1875) English physician and educator

Book II, p. 408.
Collected Works

Dolores O'Riordan photo
Alexander Hamilton photo
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk photo

“The nation has placed its faith in the precept that all laws should be inspired by actual needs here on earth as a basic fact of national life.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in A World View of Criminal Justice (2005) by Richard K. Vogler, p. 116

Khushwant Singh photo
Thomas Brooks photo

“Though there is nothing more dangerous, yet there is nothing more ordinary, than for weak saints to make their sense and feeling the judge of their condition. We must strive to walk by faith.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 245.

Pittacus of Mytilene photo

“Cultivate truth, good faith, experience, cleverness, sociability, and industry.”

As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, i. 78.

Brad Paisley photo
Jan Smuts photo
James Freeman Clarke photo
Frances Ridley Havergal photo

“Jesus, Master, I am Thine;
Keep me faithful, keep me near;
Let Thy presence in me shine
All my homeward way to cheer.
Jesus, at Thy feet I fall,
Oh, be Thou my All in All.”

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879) British poet and hymn-writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 398.

Hilaire Belloc photo

“Even where the Faith is preserved men pursue wealth and power inordinately. Where the Faith is lost they pursue nothing else.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), Ch. III Survivals (iii) The "Wealth and Power" Argument

Josef Hoffmann photo

“Our aim is to create an island of tranquility in our own country which, amid the joyful hum of arts and crafts, would be welcome to anyone who professes faith in Ruskin and Morris.”

Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) Austrian architect and product designer

Declaration in work programme of Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop, 1903)

Bartolomé de las Casas photo
Mike Pompeo photo
Edward Bond photo

“Art is the expression of the conviction that we can have a rational relationship with the world and each other. It isn't the faith or hope that we can, it is the demonstration that we can.”

Edward Bond (1934) English writer best known as a dramatist

Source: Programme note for We Come to the River (1976); cited from Lear (London: Methuen, 1983) p. xii.

Jerry Coyne photo
James Connolly photo

“Though I have usually posed as a Catholic, I have not done my duty for 15 years, and have not the slightest tincture of faith left…”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

Letter from James Connolly to John Carstairs Matheson, 30 January 1908. Socialism Today - The Connolly & religion debate http://www.socialismtoday.org/103/connolly.html

Buckminster Fuller photo
Paul Keating photo

“This is the sweetest victory of all. This is a victory for the true believers; the people who, in difficult times, have kept the faith.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

1993 election victory speech.

John Gray photo

“Liberals tend to regard being subjects of the Queen as an insult to their dignity. But at least the archaic structures by which we are ruled do not force us to define ourselves by blood, soil or faith, and we are protected from the poisonous politics of identity.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

"Monarchy is the key to our liberty," http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/29/comment.politics1, The Observer (2007-07-29)

Aron Ra photo

“[Religion] is literally a delusion, but one caused by conditioning rather than pathology. There are a number of studies showing a negative correlation of faith as debilitating certain areas of the brain. So religion can lead to, conceal, or even encourage mental disorders without actually being one itself.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Dana Gioia photo
François Fénelon photo
Robert Ley photo

“Catastrophe was only narrowly averted. It was all due to the faith of one man! Yes, you who called us godless, we found our faith in Adolf Hitler, and through him found God once again. That is the greatness of our day, that is our good fortune!”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Speech given on November 3, 1936. Quoted in Wir alle helfen dem Führer "Schicksal — ich glaube!" (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), pages 103-114

Georges Bernanos photo
William Tyndale photo
Henry Adams photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo

“Faith feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition, nor with authority. It seeks support of its enemy, reason.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IV : The Essence of Catholicism

William Hazlitt photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo

“I have no wisdom, no skills, and no faith
but I received strength, it tears the world apart.
I shall break, a heavy wave, against its shores
and a young wave will cover my trace.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Hymn" (1935), trans. by Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Three Winters (1936)

Alexander H. Stephens photo

“As to whether we shall have war with our late confederates, or whether all matters of differences between us shall be amicably settled, I can only say that the prospect for a peaceful adjustment is better, so far as I am informed, than it has been. The prospect of war is, at least, not so threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President Lincoln’s inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was expected. Fort Sumter, it is believed, will soon be evacuated. What course will be pursued toward Fort Pickens, and the other forts on the gulf, is not so well understood. It is to be greatly desired that all of them should be surrendered. Our object is peace, not only with the North, but with the world. All matters relating to the public property, public liabilities of the Union when we were members of it, we are ready and willing to adjust and settle upon the principles of right, equity, and good faith. War can be of no more benefit to the North than to us. Whether the intention of evacuating Fort Sumter is to be received as an evidence of a desire for a peaceful solution of our difficulties with the United States, or the result of necessity, I will not undertake to say. I would feign hope the former. Rumors are afloat, however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point is, keep your armor bright and your powder dry.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Ben Carson photo

“I don't consider myself a “religious” person at all. I am, however, a person of enormous faith.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 134

Maurice Merleau-Ponty photo
Amir Taheri photo
Alexander Maclaren photo

“If our faith in God is not the veriest sham, it demands, and will produce, the abandonment sometimes, the subordination always, of external helps and material good.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 240.

Gabriele Münter photo
Joseph H. Hertz photo
Thaddeus Stevens photo
James Dobson photo
Clarence Darrow photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Charles Kingsley photo

“And therefore let us say, in utter faith, "Come as Thou seest best — but in whatsoever way Thou comest — even so come, Lord Jesus."”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 593.

Zane Grey photo

“!-- Recipe for greatness — --> To bear up under loss — to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief — to be victor over anger — to smile when tears are close — to resist evil men and base instincts — to hate hate and to love love — to go on when it would seem good to die — to seek ever after the glory and the dream — to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be — that is what any man can do, and so be great.”

Zane Grey (1872–1939) American novelist

As quoted in The North American Almanac (1931), p. 54, this sometimes published with a prefix "Recipe for greatness —" but this does not appear in the earliest versions of it yet located.<!-- also in 1000 Brilliant Achievement Quotes: Advice from the World's Wisest (2004) by David DeFord, p. 92 -->

James Fenimore Cooper photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo

“A well-deserved standing ovation from the Lord's faithful and what can you say about any Collingwood innings? Nuggety, earthy, gritty. All hail Ross Kemp - give that man his own cop show on ITV.”

Ben Dirs journalist

England vs West Indies, First Test, day two as it happened, 2006-18-05, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6668549.stm,

“Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modem West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity. Its battle-cry was that the State should be freed from the stranglehold of the Church, and the citizen should be left to his own individual choice in matters of belief. And it met with great success in every Western democracy. Had India borrowed this doctrine from the modem West, it would have meant a rejection of the closed creeds of Islam and Christianity, and a promotion of the Sanatana Dharma family of faiths which have been naturally secularist in the modern Western sense. But what happened actually was that Secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come here in the company of foreign invaders, and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries.
We should not, therefore, confuse India's Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognized as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.
Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India's freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?
One has only to go to the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam and its above-mentioned luminaries. And one can see immediately that their true character has nothing to do with that with which they have been invested in our school and college text-books. No deeper probe is needed for unraveling the mysteries of Nehruvian Secularism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Tipu Sultan - Villain or Hero (1993)

Alexander Maclaren photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin all take it for granted that the faithful will if necessary lay down life itself in the holy cause.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Individualism and Socialism (1933)

Edgar Guest photo
Richard Francis Burton photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Sarah Dessen photo
John Newton photo
Anthony Watts photo
G. I. Gurdjieff photo

“Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

Aphorisms

William Adams photo

“There is a boundary to the understanding, and when it is reached, faith is the continuation of reason.”

William Adams (1706–1789) Fellow and Master of Pembroke College, Oxford

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 219.

Jerry Coyne photo
Dag Hammarskjöld photo
Jahangir photo
Hermann Samuel Reimarus photo

“Jesus himself could not perform miracles where the people had not faith beforehand, and when sensible men, the learned and rulers of those times, demanded of him a miracle which could be submitted to examination, he, instead of granting the request, began to upbraid them; so that no man of this stamp could believe in him. It was not until thirty to sixty years after the death of Jesus, that people began to write an account of the performance of these miracles, in a language which the Jews in Palestine did not understand. And this was at a time when the Jewish nation was in a state of the greatest disquietude and confusion, and when very few of those who had known Jesus were still alive. Nothing then was easier for them than to invent as many miracles as they pleased, without fear of their writings being readily understood or refuted. It had been impressed upon all converts from the beginning that it was both advantageous and soul-saving to believe, and to put the mind captive under the obedience of faith; and consequently there was as much credulity among them as there was "pia fraud" or "deception from good motives" among their teachers; and both of these, as is well known, prevailed in the highest degree in the early Christian church.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, pp. 73–74

Isaac Barrow photo

“The Mathematics which effectually exercises, not vainly deludes or vexatiously torments studious Minds with obscure Subtilties, perplexed Difficulties, or contentious Disquisitions; which overcomes without Opposition, triumphs without Pomp, compels without Force, and rules absolutely without Loss of Liberty; which does not privately overreach a weak Faith, but openly assaults an armed Reason, obtains a total Victory, and puts on inevitable Chains; whose Words are so many Oracles, and Works as many Miracles; which blabs out nothing rashly, nor designs anything from the Purpose, but plainly demonstrates and readily performs all Things within its Verge; which obtrudes no false Shadow of Science, but the very Science itself, the Mind firmly adheres to it, as soon as possessed of it, and can never after desert it of its own Accord, or be deprived of it by any Force of others: Lastly the Mathematics, which depend upon Principles clear to the Mind, and agreeable to Experience; which draws certain Conclusions, instructs by profitable Rules, unfolds pleasant Questions; and produces wonderful Effects; which is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the 47 unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human Affairs.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

"Ration before the University of Cambridge on being elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics," (1660), reported in: Mathematical Lectures, (1734), p. 28

Robert P. George photo
Yane Sandanski photo

“We are a mixture of faiths and nationalities. Among us are Bulgarians and Albanians, Serbs and Macedonians. We have even a Jew with us. But we are no bandits. You shall know very soon why you are captured.”

Yane Sandanski (1872–1915) Bulgarian revolutionary

Yane Sandanski (1901), in: Note by Katerina Tsilka, cited in: Teresa Carpenter. The Miss Stone Affair: America's First Modern Hostage Crisis https://books.google.nl/books?id=az0Skf467RwC&pg=PA40, 2003. p. 40-41
Context: Yane Sandanski was speaking to Miss Stone and Katerina Tsilka, the two hostages in the Miss Stone Affair.

Charles Péguy photo
John Ashcroft photo
John Gray photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Jack McDevitt photo

“Faith is conviction without evidence, and sometimes even in the face of contrary evidence. In some quarters, this quality is perceived as a virtue.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 12 (p. 106)

Patrick Buchanan photo
Jonathan Edwards photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
William O. Douglas photo