Belief

"All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own."

"I believe — that the Lord God created the universe. I believe — that He sent His only Son to die for my sins. And I believe — that ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America. I am a Mormon and a Mormon just believes."

"An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."

"Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge about things without parallel."

"And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

"Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days."

"A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between the supremacy of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics, where the very possibility of integral human development is radically called into question. In this most delicate and critical area, the fundamental question asserts itself force-fully: is man the product of his own labours or does he depend on God? Scientific discoveries in this field and the possibilities of technological intervention seem so advanced as to force a choice between two types of reasoning: reason open to transcendence or reason closed within immanence. We are presented with a clear either/ or. Yet the rationality of a self-centred use of technology proves to be irrational because it implies a decisive rejection of meaning and value. It is no coincidence that closing the door to transcendence brings one up short against a difficulty: how could being emerge from nothing, how could intelligence be born from chance? Faced with these dramatic questions, reason and faith can come to each other's assistance. Only together will they save man. Entranced by an exclusive reliance on technology, reason without faith is doomed to flounder in an illusion of its own omnipotence. Faith without reason risks being cut off from everyday life."

"Faith is never identical with "piety"."

"Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. It is intellectual bankruptcy. With faith, you don't have to put any work into proving your case. You can "just believe.""

"The idea of faith interested him, even fascinated him, not as an intellectual idea, not as a concept or some abstract theoretical framework, but as a way of controlling people, as a way of understanding and so manipulating them. As a flaw, in the end, as something which was wrong with others that was not wrong with him."

"Faith is the eye that sees nothing and rejoices in it."

"“She is armed with the power of the spirit. The power of faith.” Dravid had resisted the urge to yawn. He had heard this kind of “empty-hand, spirit-power” mania too many times to even give it credence by mocking it. He had also seen any number of similarly deluded cults and spiritual blind-faithers walk like fools into the trajectory of safe-care weapons, only to have their very real physical bodies torn to shreds by unspiritual projectiles and explosives that needed no faith in invisible deities to perform their lethal function. Faith might move mountains; but lasers cut flesh. And without flesh to sustain it, there was nothing left to harbor faith."

"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."

"Faith is a higher faculty than reason."

"The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life."

"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."

"Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest understand."

"Est autem fides credere quod nondum vides; cujus fidei merces est videre quod credis."

"Blind faith in any institution does not make one honorable."

"The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world."

"God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and proportional to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by understanding; but divine and celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of divine and superior sense in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at some times snatch a glimpse, but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and original of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hid within the veil of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but through faith in his divine revelation. He that walks without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own. And he that, out of the gross and wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves out a religion to himself, is but a more refined idolater than those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this reason God is nowhere said to be jealous, but upon the account of his worship."

"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."

"Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good."

"The power of any faith comes not from its coercion of critics and dissenters. It comes from the moral integrity and the intellectual strength of its believers."

"No doctrine can be a proper object of our faith which it is not more reasonable to believe than to reject. […] In receiving therefore 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."

"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."

"Even theologians — even the great theologians of the thirteenth century, — even Saint Thomas Aquinas himself — did not trust to faith alone, or assume the existence of God."

"I have faith; not perhaps in the old dogmas, but in the new ones; faith in human nature; faith in science; faith in the survival of the fittest. Let us be true to our time, Mrs. Lee!"

"In order to provide you, my dearest son Reginald, with a summary of the whole Christian life, to be kept ever before your eyes, our entire aim in this work will be to discuss these three virtues: first of all faith, then hope, and finally charity. This is, in fact, the order followed by the Apostle, and it is also what sound reason demands."

""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."

"He who dallies is a dastard, He who doubts is damned."

"When in doubt, win the trick."

"Doubt indulged soon becomes doubt realized."

"Vous ne prouvez que trop que chercher à connaître N'est souvent qu' apprendre à douter."

"Uncertain ways unsafest are, And doubt a greater mischief than despair."

"Non men che saver, dubbiar m'aggrata."

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."

"Doubt is for the dying."

"La doute n'est pas un état bien agréable, mais l'assurance est un état ridicule."

"Those who do not doubt do not believe. Faith is maintained by resolving doubts, and again resolving those further doubts which are suggested by the resolution of previous doubts."

"Only those who doubt really believe, and those who do not doubt are neither tempted against their faith nor do they truly believe."

"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."

"There lives more faith in honest doubt,Believe me, than in half the creeds."

"Out of doubt comes faith."

"Modest doubt is call'd The beacon of the wise."

"No hinge nor loop, To hang a doubt on."

"To be once in doubt Is once to be resolv'd."

"Our doubts are traitors And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt."

"But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in To saucy doubts and fears."

"To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?"