Faith

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Faith is a higher faculty than reason. ~ Philip James Bailey
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it. ~ Samuel Butler

Quotations about faith

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[edit] Quotes

Who hath no faith to man, to God hath none. ~ George Chapman
Alphabetized by author or source
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: the morning daylight appears plainer when you put out your candle. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. ~ Erich Fromm
If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask? ~ Graham Greene
I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe. ~ Robert A. Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land
In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't. ~ Blaise Pascal
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right. ~ Alexander Pope
Faith: The opposite of dogmatism. ~ John Ralston Saul
We get orders from a loom — Fate. And we're supposed to take enough faith in what we're doing is right. Killing someone we know nothing about. I don't know if I can do that. ~ Wesley Gibson in Wanted
Scepticism is the beginning of faith. ~ Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
    "Oh," says man, "but the Babel fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't."
    "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
    "Ah, that was easy," says man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white, and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.
    Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys.
  • I would fain ask one of these bigotted Infidels, supposing all the great Points of Atheism ... were laid together and formed into a kind of Creed, according to the Opinions of the most celebrated Atheists; I say, supposing such a Creed as this were formed, and imposed upon any one People in the World, whether it would not require an infinitely greater Measure of Faith, than any Set of Articles which they so violently oppose.
  • Est autem fides credere quod nondum vides; cujus fidei merces est videre quod credis.
    • Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
    • St. Augustine (354-430), Sermones 4.1.1
  • Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand.
    • St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate 29
  • Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge about things without parallel.
  • You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
  • I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, 'This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me.'
    • George Carlin, as quoted in The New York Times (20 August 1995)
  • Who hath no faith to man, to God hath none.
  • In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
  • The word faith is not generally regarded as a primary term in the scientist's lexicon, yet . . . Faith is the vital ingredient in the Cyclops project (i.e., communicating with extraterrestrial races via microwave transmission).
  • I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
  • Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
  • Faith — is the Pierless Bridge
    Supporting what We see
    Unto the Scene that We do not.
  • To take up half on trust, and half to try,
    Name it not faith but bungling bigotry.
    • John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Part I, line 141.
  • Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the life and soul of a practical faith... A speculative faith consists only in the assent of the understanding, but in a saving faith there is also the consent of the heart.
  • Faith lived in the incognito is one which is located outside the criticism coming from society, from politics, from history, for the very reason that it has itself the vocation to be a source of criticism. It is faith (lived in the incognito) which triggers the issues for the others, which causes everything seemingly established to be placed in doubt, which drives a wedge into the world of false assurances.
    • Jacques Ellul, in L'espérance oubliée (1972) [Hope in Time of Abandonment] as translated by C. Edward Hopkin (1973)
  • The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: the morning daylight appears plainer when you put out your candle.
    • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758), Chapter "On Virtue, Vice, God, And Faith"
  • Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
  • Faith in an order, which is the basis of science, will not (as it cannot reasonably) be dissevered from faith in an Ordainer, which is the basis of religion.
  • If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
  • וְצַדִּ֖יק בֶּאֱמוּנָתֹ֥ו יִחְיֶֽה.‏
  • Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine … The bedrock of every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this life, this universe.
  • The moderation we see among nonfundamentalists is not some sign that faith itself has evolved; it is, rather, the product of the many hammer blows of modernity that have exposed certain tenets of faith to doubt.
  • Faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious people give to one another to believe things strongly without evidence.
  • Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζοµένων ὑπόστασις, πραγµάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεποµένων. Ἐν ταύτῃ γὰρ ἐµαρτυρήθησαν οἱ πρεσβύτεροι. Πίστει νοοῦµεν κατηρτίσθαι τοὺς αἰῶνας ῥήµατι Θεοῦ, εἰς τὸ µὴ ἐκ ϕαινοµένων τὰ βλεπόµενα γεγονέναι.
    • Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
  • Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it — especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.
  • I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
  • Faith is the surrender of the mind, it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It's our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. ... Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated
  • My faith is great: out of the transient darkness of the present the shadows will flee away, and Day will yet dawn. I am an Anarchist.
    No man who believes in force and violence is an Anarchist. The true Anarchist decries all influences save those of love and reason. Ideas are his only arms.
    Being an Anarchist I am also a Socialist. Socialism is the antithesis of Anarchy. One is the North Pole of Truth, the other the South.
    • Elbert Hubbard, in "The Better Part" in A Message to Garcia and Thirteen Other Things (1901), p. 132
  • Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose it must be at an end. Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the cross, abandonment, temptation and doubt about everything that exists! Our faith ... must be born of nothingness, it must taste this nothingness and be given it to taste in a way that no philosophy of nihilism can imagine.
    • Hans Joachim Iwand, unpublished manuscript, quoted in Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (1972), translated by R. A. Wilson and John Bowden. London: SCM Press, 1974, pp. 31–32. This quote is sometimes misattributed to Moltmann.
  • Σὺ πιστεύεις ὅτι ὁ Θεὸς εἷς ἐστίν, καλῶς ποιεῖς· καὶ τὰ δαιμόνια πιστεύουσιν, καὶ φρίσσουσιν.
    • Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
  • If he were
    To be made honest by an act of parliament
    I should not alter in my faith of him.
    • Ben Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass (performed 1616; published 1631), Act IV, scene 1.
  • We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other...except through faith.
  • Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
  • O welcome pure-ey'd Faith, white-handed Hope,
    Thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!
  • That in such righteousness
    To them by faith imputed they may find
    Justification towards God, and peace
    Of conscience.
  • But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast
    To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.
    • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.
  • Orthodoxy is the abillity to say two and two make five when faith requires it.
  • In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
    • Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1669), quoted in Thoughts from Earth (2004), p. 9
  • For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
    His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
  • The enormous faith of many made for one.
  • Faith is cold as ice. Why are little ones born only to suffer for the want of immunity or a bowl of rice? Well, who would hold a price on the heads of the innocent children if there's some immortal power to control the dice?
    • Rush, Roll the Bones (1991)
  • Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine
    By which alone the mortal heart is led
    Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
    • George Santayana, "O World, thou choosest not the better part", Sonnets and Other Verses (1906)
  • Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
  • Set on your foot,
    And with a heart new-fir'd I follow you,
    To do I know not what: but it sufficeth
    That Brutus leads me on.
  • Faith creates the foundation for conviction.
  • I heard once of an American who so defined faith, "that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue." For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.
  • How sweet to have a common faith!
    To hold a common scorn of death!
  • Faith and unfaith can ne'er be equal powers;
    Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.
  • Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
    And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith.
  • Doubt, indeed, is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization. It is the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith which springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best.
  • Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
  • We get orders from a loom — Fate. And we're supposed to take enough faith in what we're doing is right. Killing someone we know nothing about. I don't know if I can do that.
    • Wesley Gibson, in Wanted (2008 film), on the killing of his first target after joining the "Weavers".
  • A faith that can be destroyed by suffering is not faith.
  • Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of Death,
    To break the shock blind nature cannot shun,
    And lands Thought smoothly on the further shore.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IV, line 721.

[edit] Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 254-56.
  • Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again, and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, if the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.
  • There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith in doctrinal matters. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it.
  • An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
    • Book of Common Prayer, Catechism.
  • "Take courage, soul!
    Hold not thy strength in vain!
    With faith o'ercome the steeps
    Thy God hath set for thee.
    Beyond the Alpine summits of great pain
    Lieth thine Italy."
  • We walk by faith, not by sight.
    • II Corinthians. V. 7.
  • His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
    Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.
  • Faith is a fine invention
    For gentlemen who see;
    But Microscopes are prudent
    In an emergency.
  • We lean on Faith; and some less wise have cried,
    "Behold the butterfly, the seed that's cast!"
    Vain hopes that fall like flowers before the blast!
    What man can look on Death unterrified?
  • Die Botschaft hör' ich wohl, allein mir fehlt der Glaube;
    Das Wunder ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind.
  • Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
    • Hebrews, XI. 1.
  • What sought they thus afar?
    Bright jewels of the mine?
    The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?—
    They sought a faith's pure shrine!
  • Mirror of constant faith, revered and mourn'd!
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book IV, line 229. Pope's translation.
  • The German is the discipline of fear; ours is the discipline of faith—and faith will triumph.
    • Gen. Joseph Joffre, at the unveiling of a statue of Lafayette in Brooklyn (1917).
  • And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but content with what we do not understand—the habit of mind which theologians call—and rightly—faith in God.
  • The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
  • Yet I argue not
    Again Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
    Of right or hope; but still bear up and steer
    Eight onward.
  • Combien de choses nous servoient hier d'articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd'hui!
    How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which to-day are fables to us!
  • If faith produce no works, I see
    That faith is not a living tree.
    Thus faith and works together grow;
    No separate life they e'er can know:
    They're soul and body, hand and heart:
    What God hath joined, let no man part.
  • Be thou faithful unto death.
    • Revelation, II. 10.
  • The saddest thing that can befall a soul
    Is when it loses faith in God and woman.
  • Faith is the subtle chain
    Which binds us to the infinite; the voice
    Of a deep life within, that will remain
    Until we crowd it thence.
  • It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.
  • I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.
    • II Timothy, IV. 7.
  • Faith, mighty faith the promise sees
    And rests on that alone;
    Laughs at impossibilities,
    And says it shall be done.
  • Through this dark and stormy night
    Faith beholds a feeble light
    Up the blackness streaking;
    Knowing God's own time is best,
    In a patient hope I rest
    For the full day-breaking!
  • A bending staff I would not break,
    A feeble faith I would not shake,
    Nor even rashly pluck away
    The error which some truth may stay,
    Whose loss might leave the soul without
    A shield against the shafts of doubt.
  • Of one in whom persuasion and belief
    Had ripened into faith, and faith become
    A passionate intuition.
  • 'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
    Of Faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
    Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
    And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.

[edit] Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • In reviewing the most mysterious doctrines of revelation, the ultimate appeal is to reason, not to determine whether she could have discovered these truths; not to declare whether, considered in themselves, they appear probable; but to decide whether it is not more reasonable to believe what God speaks than to confide in our own crude and feeble conceptions. No doctrine can be a proper object of our faith, which is not more reasonable to believe than to reject.
  • Orthodoxy can be learnt from others; living faith must be a matter of personal experience.
  • All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions. The man strongly possessed of an idea is the master of all who are uncertain and wavering. Clear, deep, living convictions rule the world.
  • Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine word which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and feelings.
  • Faith makes the discords of the present, the harmonies of the future.
  • No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
  • If you have any faith, give me, for heaven's sake, a share of it! Your doubts you may keep to yourself, for I have a plenty of my own.
  • Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give.
  • Faith is a grasping of Almighty power;
    The hand of man laid on the arm of God; —
    The grand and blessed hour in which the things impossible to me
    Become the possible, O Lord, through Thee.
  • Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain; and only faith can do it.
  • Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
  • Ye children of promise, who are awaiting your call to glory, take possession of the inheritance that now is yours. By faith take the promises. Live upon them, not upon emotions. Remember feeling is not faith. Faith grasps and clings to the promises. Faith says, "I am certain, not because feeling testifies to it, but because God says it."
  • Faith is the subtle chain
    That binds us to the Infinite.
  • Faith is the key that unlocks the cabinet of God's treasures; the king's messenger from the celestial world, to bring all the supplies we need out of the fullness that there is in Christ.
  • Faith is seated in the understanding as well as in the will. It has an eye to see Christ as well as a wing to fly to Christ.
  • Faith, though it hath sometimes a trembling hand, it must not have a withered hand, but must stretch.
  • The faith of immortality gives to every mind that cherishes it a certain firmness of texture.
  • In faith and hope
    Earth I resign;
    Secure of heaven,
    For I am Thine!
  • This saving faith is the perceiving, believing, and resting upon a fact — the atoning death of Jesus Christ. The failure to understand this is one fruitful cause of the confusion in many minds about this subject. For not unfrequently persons are looking into their own hearts, and trying to discover whether they have faith or not, instead of looking away from themselves altogether at the object of faith.
  • Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

[edit] Unsourced

  • That's the thing about faith. If you don't have it, you can't understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary.
    • Major Kira Nerys (from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
  • Most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.

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