“Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.”

“Almost every faith can point to its rejoicing martyrs.”

“What good is a martyr, Captain Bastable? A martyr shows us the power of faith. But what if that faith is misinformed? While people believe in heroes and the magic power of an individual to save them from the human condition, they will never be free.”

“Perhaps there is nobody who would sacrifice his life for the sake of maintaining that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, for such a truth does not demand the sacrifice of our life; but, on the other hand, there are many who have lost their lives for the sake of maintaining their religious faith. Indeed, it is truer to say that martyrs make faith than that faith makes martyrs. For faith is not the mere adherence of the intellect to an abstract principle; it is not the recognition of a theoretical truth, the process in which the will merely sets in motion our faculty of comprehension; faith is an act of the will — it is a movement of the soul towards a practical truth, towards a person, towards something that makes us not merely comprehend life, but that makes us live.”

“In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs.”

“The dews of Hermon rest upon thee now,
Fair saint and martyr! and yet once again
Faith, hope and charity, like gracious rain,
Fall on thy consecrated virgin brow.”

“A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith.”

“Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew.”

“Faith is not about finding meaning in the world, there may be no such thing -- faith is the belief in our capacity to create meaningful lives.”

“…But they accuse us of being terrorists. Terrorists, because when the Palestinian mother welcomes her martyred son, she wishes to receive him as a corpse. She does not want him to be alive…. The wish of the Palestinian mother is to see the body of her son the martyr…”