Wisdom Quotations

Faith

Albert Einstein:
Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.

Anais Nin:
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

D. H. Lawrence:
This is what I believe:
That I am I.

That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed.

Dorothy Thompson:
Disillusion comes only to the illusioned. One cannot be disillusioned of what one never put faith in.

Dorothy Thompson:
The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.

Edith Hamilton:
Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

Elizabeth Barret Browning:
Whoso loves, believes the impossible.

George Bernard Shaw:
We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

George Santayana:
The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923

Gladys Taber:
A garden is evidence of faith. It links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting.

Stillmeadow Sampler

Harriet Martineau:
We do not believe in immortality because we can prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.

Jimmy Carter:
I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.

John A. Hutchinson:
Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.

Louisa May Alcott:
Beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come.

in Little Women, chapter 36

Marian Wright Edelman:
My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

Marian Wright Edelman:
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

Mary McLeod Bethune:
Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

Pearl S. Buck:
I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.

Pearl S. Buck:
When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.

Peter F. Drucker:
There are no creeds in mathematics.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

Reinhold Niebuhr:
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

Thomas Jefferson:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

letter to Connecticut Baptists