“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”
Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright
1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922)
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 19 (p. 371)
“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”
Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright
1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922)
“Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
Source: 1920s, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Ch. 14 "Types of Men" - 3 : The Believer
Source: Prejudices: Third Series
“Faith, it is said, is better than belief, because belief is when someone else does the thinking.”
Mitch Albom (1958) American author
Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1950s, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), p. 215
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi
Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5<!-- The sense of the ineffable, p. 89 -->
Context: Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition, faith is attachment to the meaning beyond the mystery.
Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.
Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the world becomes a market place for you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for the discovery of the world as an allusion to God.
“I meant what I said,
and I said what I meant
An elephant's faithful,
One hundred percent.”
Dr. Seuss book Horton Hatches the Egg
Source: Horton Hatches the Egg (1940)
“The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.”
Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist
“That would require an unprecedented leap of faith. I don’t do faith, Scorpio said.”
Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap
Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 33 (p. 515)