Quotes about faith
page 3

“Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Source: The Birth of Tragedy

Life

“You are a sceptic." "Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith." "What are you?" "To define is to limit.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“For trust not him that hath once broken faith”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: King Henry VI, Part 3

“You don't have to believe in my miracles. You can call them accidents or coincidences, if you must. But don't pity me for my faith. And don't presume that you're better, just because you believe something different.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Source: Warbreaker

“Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.”

Solón (-638–-558 BC) Athenian legislator

Wisdom, Age, Learning, Waiting

“Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.”

Stanisław Lem book The Star Diaries

The Star Diaries (1976)

Time

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Happiness, Confidence, Success, Motivational

“Sustaining faith is what sets you through those dark nights of the soul when you don’t know where to go or what to do, and it seems that you can’t last another day…but because of your faith in God, you do.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, Soul, Night

“Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

“He that is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need:
If thou sorrow, he will weep;
If thou wake, he cannot sleep:
Thus of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful friend from flattering foe.”

William Shakespeare book The Passionate Pilgrim

Source: The Passionate Pilgrim

Sleep, Help, Heart, Parting

“Faith in God includes Faith in God's timing.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

God, Time, Wise

“You say you lost your faith
But that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“Human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Pleasure

“I meet a third man he's an old man he trips in the street he falls and I help him up, walk him to the curb. He shakes my hand says keep the faith, young man. I ask him what he means, he says keep running and don't let them catch you.”

James Frey My Friend Leonard

Source: My Friend Leonard

Help

“The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived - not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Let Me be a Woman

Life, God, Time

“The desire for a strong faith is not the proof of a strong faith, rather the opposite. If one has it one may permit oneself the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is secure enough, fixed enough for it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Source: Twilight of the Idols

Beauty, Strong

“When you come to the edge of all the light you know,
and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown,
FAITH is knowing one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid to stand on
or you will be taught how to fly.”

Barbara Winter (1944)

Light, Flying

“Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Men are as faithful as their options.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Bigger and Blacker (HBO, 1999)
Variant: A man is basically as faithful as his options.

Men

“While you are going through your trial, you can recall your past victories and count the blessings that you do have with a sure hope of greater ones to allow if you are faithful.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Hope, Past, Victory

“I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

“All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.”

Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) American translator

God, Personality

“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."”

Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson

Following the Equator (1897)
Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XII

“When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Love, World, Hope

“The most beautiful act of faith is the one made in darkness, in sacrifice, and with extreme effort.”

Padre Pio (1887–1968) Italian saint, priest, stigmatist and mystic

Beauty, Effort

“Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Thinking

“When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Source: Christian Science (1907), Ch. 4

Confidence, Boy, Business, Thinking

“There is no fellowship inviolate,
no faith is kept, when kingship is concerned.”
Nulla sancta societas Nec fides regni est.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Cicero in De Officiis Book I, Chapter VIII - translation by Walter Miller
Variant translation: To kingship belongs neither sacred fellowship nor faith.

“If thou desire to profit, read with humility, simplicity, and faithfulness; nor even desire the repute of learning.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 37.

Learning, Reading

“If ever I do escape, no one shall reproach me with having broken or violated my faith, not having given my word to any one, whosoever it may be.”

Joan of Arc (1412–1431) French folk heroine and Roman Catholic saint

First public examination (21 February 1431) http://www.stjoan-center.com/Trials/sec01.html Trial records (1431)

“The social order of Islam is opposed to our Western values. Human rights and democracy are as incompatible with the Muslim religious doctrine as is the equality of women. In Islam, the individual and his free will count for nothing; faith and religious struggle – jihad, the holy war – for everything.”

Jörg Haider (1950–2008) Austrian politician

stated in the early 1990s, as quoted in "Towards a Community of Values?" by Hans-Georg Betz – in Austria in the European Union (2003), p. 434

Women, War, Democracy

“It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 25

World, Law, Nature, Universe

“In the face of violence that seems intractable and suffering that is so senseless, it is easy to grow cynical, and I think tempting to give in to the notion that peace and security may be beyond our grasp. But I say to all of you here today, especially the young people, do not give into that cynicism. Do not lose the idealism and optimism that is the root of all great change. Don’t ever lose the faith that says, if we want it, if we are willing to work for it, if we stand together, the future can be different; tomorrow can be better.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Peace, Optimism, Thinking

“We must remember that the greatest price of this conflict is not paid by us. It is paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocker will take her life in the night. It is paid by he Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own. These are God's children. And after all of the politics and all of the posturing, this is about the right of every human being to live with dignity and security. This is a lesson embedded in the three great faiths that call one small slice of Earth the Holy Land.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

United Nations, General Debate of the 64th Session (2009), United States of America, H.E. Mr. Barack Obama, President p. 6 http://un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/pdf/US_en.pdf, (23 September 2009) 2009

Life, God, Children, Fear

“If we are faithful to GOD in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life.”

James Hudson Taylor A Retrospect

(J. Hudson Taylor. A Retrospect. Philadelphia: China Inland Mission, n.d., 20).

Life, God, Help

“And finally, we recognize that our best partners in protecting vulnerable people from succumbing to violent extremist ideologies are the communities themselves -- families, friends, neighbors, clerics, faith leaders who love and care for these young people. Remember that violent extremism is not unique to any one faith, so no one should be profiled or targeted simply because of their faith.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Leaders' Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism speech (September 2015)

Love, People, Family, Communication

“Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind Cure, the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with the same old, powerful instrument—the patient's imagination. Differing names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the ways of the others.

They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces alone. There would seem to be an element of danger here. It has the look of claiming too much, I think. Public confidence would probably be increased if less were claimed.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Book I, Ch. 4
Christian Science (1907)

Way, Confidence, Imagination, Question

“ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents. No just God would stand for what they did yesterday, and for what they do every single day. ISIL has no ideology of any value to human beings. Their ideology is bankrupt. They may claim out of expediency that they are at war with the United States or the West, but the fact is they terrorize their neighbors and offer them nothing but an endless slavery to their empty vision, and the collapse of any definition of civilized behavior. And people like this ultimately fail. They fail, because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Statement by the President (20 August 2014) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/20/statement-president 2014

God, War, People, Religion

“I keep having the same experience and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lack an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. Everybody looks at you with strange eyes and goes right on handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody even blushes when you intimate that their weights are underweight; nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly, without first having given themselves an account of the final and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even troubling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority." But what is goodheartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress--as that which separates the higher human beings from the lower.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 2
The Gay Science (1882)

Women, Men, People, Feeling

“Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Inquisition, 1868 The Sword and the Trowel http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/inq.htm

Men, World, Religion, Nature

“It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. And contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidate - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice. We have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

God, People, Perfection

“We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)

Life, Men, Children, People

“Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

La foi est la consolation des misérables et la terreur des heureux.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 184.

Happiness

“I inherited honesty and self-discipline from my father; from my mother, I inherited faith in goodness and deep kindness as did my three brothers and sisters.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 8.

Sister

“If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education". This last is particularly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in greater or less degree in the schools of every civilised country.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 220

Education, School, Support, Thinking

“Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, gentle, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly and never seeking her own; for whosoever a man seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.”

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Book III, ch. 5.
The Imitation of Christ (c. 1418)

Love, Strong, Suffering, Sincerity

“The dreary alternative of agnosticism, which the young students are taught to accept as the final word of science on the grave mysteries of life and thought, and man’s hopes of personal communion with God are laughed away to make room for an inane faith in evolution and the law of collective development and progress…. Hindu students especially need the strengthening influence which faith in God, and in Conscience as His voice in the human heart alone, can give. The national mind can not live in agnosticism. The experiment was tried once on a large scale by the greatest moral teacher of this or any other age. The failure of Buddhism is a warning that such teaching can have no hold on the national thought.”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

Religion had important place in his life is indicated in his admonishing Professor Selby (also a professor in the Deccan College) notes on a published ”Notes of Lectures on Butelr’s Anaology and Sermons" quoted in pages=105-106

Life, God, Age, Law

“The Allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, he, faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to quit France, and even to relinquish life, for the good of his country.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Act of Abdication (4 April 1814)

Life, Peace, Country

“Keynesian economics at a minimum provides a license for welfare state measures and other government efforts towards redistribution of wealth. The license is the faith that macroeconomic stabilization and prosperity are compatible with a wide range of social policies, that modern capitalism and democracy are robust enough to prosper and progress while being humane and equitable. That faith conflicts with the visions of extreme Right and Left, which agree that extremes of wealth and poverty, of security and insecurity, are indispensable to the functioning of capitalism. Keynesian policies helped to confound those dismal prophecies in the past; I think they will do so again.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

James Tobin, "Keynes' Policies in Theory and Practice", Challenge (1983).
1970s and later

Democracy, Thinking, Effort, Past

“In all worthwhile undertakings, There will be risks of failure, of disappointments, of even disaster. To face them all with inner poise and firm faith is to discover the glory of final victory.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Disappointment, Failure, Victory

“Faithful to the word given and the idea had.
All else is up to God!”

Fernando Pessoa book Mensagem

Poem "D. Pedro", verses 11-12
Message
Original: Fiel à palavra dada e à ideia tida.
Tudo o mais é com Deus!

God, Idea

“However great a woman may be, she must place herself before her husband in this way; that is to say, she must be ready to carry out her husband’s orders and please him in all circumstances. Then her life will be successful. When the wife becomes as irritable as the husband, their life at home is sure to be disturbed or ultimately completely broken. In the modern day, the wife is never submissive, and therefore home life is broken even by slight incidents. Either the wife or the husband may take advantage of the divorce laws. According to the Vedic law, however, there is no such thing as divorce laws, and a woman must be trained to be submissive to the will of her husband. Westerners contend that this is a slave mentality for the wife, but factually it is not; it is the tactic by which a woman can conquer the heart of her husband, however irritable or cruel he may be. In this case we clearly see that although Cyavana Muni was not young but indeed old enough to be Sukanya’s grandfather and was also very irritable, Sukanya, the beautiful young daughter of a king, submitted herself to her old husband and tried to please him in all respects. Thus she was a faithful and chaste wife.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 9, Chapter 6, verse 53, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/9/6/53 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Women's Rights

Life, Law, Beauty, Way

“Again and again the imaginary plan on which one attempts to build up that order breaks down and then we must try another. This imaginative vision and faith in the ultimate success are indispensable. The pure rationalist has no place here.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Where Is Science Going? (1932)

Imagination, Success

“Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

“The face of globalisation is contradictory. The internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence into the home. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and change to communities. In all nations - including America - this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities - those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith. But I also know that human progress cannot be denied. There need not be contradictions between development and tradition.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009, A New Beginning (June 2009)

Fear, Family, Home, Communication

“Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.”

Dick Francis (1920–2010) English jockey and crime writer

Reflex

Happiness, People, World, Way

“A faith that can be destroyed by suffering is not faith.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

Suffering

“We are joined today by inspiring entrepreneurs from more than 120 countries and many from across Africa. And all of you embody a spirit that we need to take on some of the biggest challenges that we face in the world -- the spirit of entrepreneurship, the idea that there are no limits to the human imagination; that ingenuity can overcome what is and create what needs to be. And everywhere I go, across the United States and around the world, I hear from people, but especially young people, who are ready to start something of their own -- to lift up people’s lives and shape their own destinies. And that’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and new businesses, new ways to deliver basic services, new ways of seeing the world -- it’s the spark of prosperity. It helps citizens stand up for their rights and push back against corruption. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don’t see a future for themselves. Entrepreneurship means ownership and self-determination, as opposed to simply being dependent on somebody else for your livelihood and your future. Entrepreneurship brings down barriers between communities and cultures and builds bridges that help us take on common challenges together. Because one thing that entrepreneurs understand is, is that you don't have to look a certain way, or be of a certain faith, or have a certain last name in order to have a good idea.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at United Nations Compound in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-global-entrepreneurship-summit 2015

People, World, Way, Imagination

“Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 53e

Wisdom, Passion

“Thought is as much a lie as love or faith.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Love, Lie

“This country now possesses the strongest credit in the world. The full consequences of a default or even the serious prospect of default by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the cost, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Letter to Majority Leader Howard Baker http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/uploads/CPC_Reagan_Letter.pdf, urging an increase in public debt ceiling (16 November 1983) 1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

World, Country

“Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 290

Truth, Way, Departure

“When I look at a building, how can I know there was a builder? Can't see him, hear him, touch him, taste him or smell him, so how can I know there was a builder? Well, the building is absolute proof there was a builder. I couldn't want better proof that there was a builder than to have the building as evidence. I don't need faith to believe in a builder, all I need is eyes that can see and a brain that works. Now the same deep, rich, scientific principle works with paintings and painters…. And the same principle works with God. When I look at Creation how can I know there was a creator? Well, creation is absolute proof there was a creator. I don't need faith to believe in a creator, all I need is eyes that can see and a brain that works.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

"The Beauty of a Broken Spirit—Atheism", The Way of the Master season 1 episode 7, 2003-05-12

God, Painting

“Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

As quoted in The Great Quotations (1960) by George Seldes, p. 864

Way

“Their faith alone will not profit them, because they have not done works of righteousness.”

Pelagius (360–420) British monk

On The Christian Life

“If there is a faith which can move mountains, then it is a faith in one’s own strength.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Wenn es einen Glauben gibt, der Berge versetzen kann, so ist es der Glaube an die eigene Kraft.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 22.

Mountain

“A 'civilization' that makes such a ridiculous fuss about alleged 'war crimes' -- acts of violence against the actual or potential enemies of one's cause -- and tolerates slaughterhouses and vivisection laboratories, and circuses and the fur industry (infliction of pain upon creatures that can never be for or against any cause), does not deserve to live. Out with it! Blessed the day it will destroy itself, so that a healthy, hard, frank and brave, nature-loving and truth-loving élite of supermen with a life-centered faith,-- a natural human aristocracy, as beautiful, on its own higher level, as the four-legged kings of the jungle -- might again rise, and rule upon its ruins, for ever!”

Savitri Devi (1905–1982) Greek–French writer

Impeachment of Man (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1959, p. x, http://www.savitridevi.org/impeachment-preface.html)

Love, Life, Pain, War

“I confess today in good faith that I am angry with myself for having formerly seen in a bad light, within the revolutionary government, Robespierre and Saint-Just. I believe that these two men were better on their own than all the revolutionaries together.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

Je confesse aujourd'hui de bonne foi que je m'en veux d'avoir autrefois vu en noir, et le gouvernement révolutionnaire et Robespierre et Saint-Just. Je crois que ces hommes valaient mieux à eux seuls que tous les révolutionnaires ensemble.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 69, 27082 2892-7]
On Maximilien de Robespierre

Men, Light

“Everyday my heart falls deeper in the pain of your sorrow.
Your cruel heart is weary of me already.
You have left me alone, yet your sorrow remains.
Truly your sorrow is more faithful than you are”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi (2000)

Pain, Heart

“Independent of biological need fulfillment and the reproductive needs of the species, cultures] satisfy not bodily needs, but values. Values define cultural man's need for rationality, meaningfulness in emotional experience, richness of imagination, and depth of faith. All cultures respond to such supra-biological values. But in what form they do so depends on the specific kind of values people happen to have.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: The systems view of the world (1996), p. 76.

People, Imagination, Dependency

“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and the hopes, the loves and the hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement, it is the dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitude.”

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

Songs of Freedom by Irish Authors (1907) Introduction. Revolutionary Song https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1907/xx/revsong.htm

Love, Fear, Hope, Imagination

“That narrow window, I expect,
Serves but to let the dusk in - "
"But please," said I, "to recollect
'Twas fashioned by an architect
Who pinned his faith on Ruskin!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Canto 3
Phantasmagoria (1869)

Fashion

“Faith has a saving connection with Christ. Christ is on the shore, so to speak, holding the rope, and as we lay hold of it with the hand of our confidence, He pulls us to shore; but all good works having no connection with Christ are drifted along down the gulf of fell despair.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

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

Confidence, Christ, Despair

“Can you by humble faith look to Jesus and say: "My substitute, my refuge, ray shield; Thou art my rock, my trust; in Thee do I confide? "Then, beloved, to you I have nothing to say, except this: " Never be afraid when you see God's power; for now that you are forgiven and accepted, now that by faith you have fled to Christ for refuge, the power of God need no more terrify you than the shield and sword of the warrior need terrify his wife and child."”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 591.

God, Art, Confidence, Christ

“The Catholic faith, … I now realized could be maintained without presumption. This was especially true after I had heard one or two parts of the Old Testament explained allegorically—whereas before this, when I had interpreted them literally, they had “killed” me spiritually.”

Aurelius Augustinus book Confessions

A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 14, p. 81.
Confessions (c. 397)

Parting

“But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress; if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope. For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America, we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done: To rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children but for somebody else’s child. To remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others -– regardless of what they look like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice. To be honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. To nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth. That is our choice. Today, we affirm hope.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)

Children, Fear, Hope, Freedom

“…faith and repentance, i. e. believing Jesus to be the Messiah, and a good life, are the indispensable conditions of the new covenant, to be performed by all those who would obtain eternal life. (The reasonableness, or rather necessity of which, that we may the better comprehend, we must a little look back to what was said in the beginning”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

§ 106
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

Life

“I have not lost my faith; and this I must attribute more to a miracle than to my own wisdom; more to Divine Providence than to my own virtue. Steadfastly, in fact from my earliest childhood, I have made this my prayer, "Lord God… grant me long life, and wisdom, and health of mind and body."”

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) Italian Renaissance mathematician, physician, astrologer

The Book of My Life (1930)

Life, Wisdom, God, Health

“I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did, march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Letter to Ulysses S. Grant http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/grant.htm (13 July 1863), Washington, D.C. 1860s

Fear, Hope, Personality, Country

“By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

As quoted in Footprints in Time : Fulfilling God's Destiny for Your Life (2007) by Jeff O'Leary, p. 223
Disputed

“Every form of catechesis would do well to attend to the “way of beauty” (via pulchritudinis). Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties. Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. This has nothing to do with fostering an aesthetic relativism which would downplay the inseparable bond between truth, goodness and beauty, but rather a renewed esteem for beauty as a means of touching the human heart and enabling the truth and goodness of the Risen Christ to radiate within it. If, as Saint Augustine says, we love only that which is beautiful, the incarnate Son, as the revelation of infinite beauty, is supremely lovable and draws us to himself with bonds of love. So a formation in the via pulchritudinis ought to be part of our effort to pass on the faith. Each particular Church should encourage the use of the arts in evangelization, building on the treasures of the past but also drawing upon the wide variety of contemporary expressions so as to transmit the faith in a new “language of parables”. We must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings, including those unconventional modes of beauty which may mean little to the evangelizers, yet prove particularly attractive for others.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 167
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love, Life, Truth, Beauty

“It is the fate of 'little faiths' of truth that they, true followers of Peter, whether they be Roman or the Protestant observance, cry out and sink in the sea of ideas, where the followers of Paul, believing in the Spirit, walk secure and undismayed.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 32

Fate, Truth, Idea, Cry

“When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.And once again I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy), immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Mais, quand d’un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l’odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sur leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l’édifice immense du souvenir.Et dès que j’eus reconnu le goût du morceau de madeleine trempé dans le tilleul que me donnait ma tante (quoique je ne susse pas encore et dusse remettre à bien plus tard de découvrir pourquoi ce souvenir me rendait si heureux), aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre.
"Overture"
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol I: Swann's Way (1913)

Happiness, People, Hope, Soul

“This morning at Flanders Field, I was reminded of how war between peoples sent a generation to their deaths in the trenches and gas of the First World War. And just two decades later, extreme nationalism plunged this continent into war once again -- with populations enslaved, and great cities reduced to rubble, and tens of millions slaughtered, including those lost in the Holocaust. It is in response to this tragic history that, in the aftermath of World War II, America joined with Europe to reject the darker forces of the past and build a new architecture of peace. Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan. Sentinels stood vigilant in a NATO Alliance that would become the strongest the world has ever known. And across the Atlantic, we embraced a shared vision of Europe -- a vision based on representative democracy, individual rights, and a belief that nations can meet the interests of their citizens through trade and open markets; a social safety net and respect for those of different faiths and backgrounds.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

Life, Death, War, People

“And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality, or race, or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can -- and will -- defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Remarks to the People of Cuba (March 2016)

People, World, Fight