This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Religious faith is not a storm cellar to which men and women can flee for refuge from the storms of life. It is, instead, an inner spiritual strength which enables them to face those storms with hope and serenity. Religious faith has the miraculous power to lift ordinary human beings to greatness in seasons of stress." - Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.
"It is faith among men that holds the moral elements of society together, as it is faith in God that binds the world to his throne" - William Maxwell Evarts
"If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God, and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"Men who accomplish great things in the industrial world are the ones who have faith in the money producing power of ideas." - Charles Sherlock Fillmore
"Few people realize what a substantial thing faith is." - Henry Ford
"The majority of people are naturally straddlers. They are not in the world to pioneer but to be as happy as possible. If pioneering in a cause brings discomfort, they would rather not be among the pioneers. they would rather stand on the sidelines and, in the combat between truth and error, wait and see which proves the stronger. Though they may have a lazy faith that truth at last will win, they do not wish to lend a premature support." - Henry Ford
"It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Miracles are for those who have little faith." - Isaac Friedman, fully Jerome Isaac Friedman
"Life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin... I want you all to treasure death and suffering more than life and to appreciate their cleansing and purifying character. Death which is an Eternal verity is revolution, as birth and after is slow and steady evolution. Death is as necessary for man's growth as life itself... All fear is a sign of want of faith... Hate the sin and love the sinner." -
"It is by faith that poetry, as well as devotion, soars above this dull earth; that imagination breaks through its clouds, breathes a purer air, and lives in a softer light." - Henry Giles
"Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice." - George Washington Goethals
"No man prays in faith who thinks he knows better than God; or who, not knowing, wishes that his ignorance may overrule God's wisdom." - William Gurnall
"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." - Thomas Guthrie
"The soul seeks God by faith, not by the reasonings of the mind and labored efforts, but by the drawings of love; to which inclinations God responds, and instructs the soul, which co-operates actively. God then puts the soul in a passive state where He accomplishes all, causing great progress, first by way of enjoyment, then by privation, and finally by pure love." -
"Faith is a practical habit, which like every other, is strengthened and increased by continual exercise. It is nourished by meditation, by prayer, and the devout perusal of the Scriptures; and the light which it diffuses becomes stronger and clearer by an uninterrupted converse with its object, and a faithful compliance with its dictates." -
"He who loses money losses much. He who loses a friend loses more. But he who loses faith loses all." - Henry H. Haskins
"Treat the other man's faith gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine." - Henry H. Haskins
"Democracy is predicated not on faith in man but on the conviction... that no man is good enough or wise enough to be entrusted with irresponsible power over his fellow-men." - Will Herberg
"Faith is not something that we acquire once and for all. Faith is an insight that must be acquired at every single moment." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"The future holds something for the man who keeps his faith in it." - H. L. Hollis
"Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief of a large one." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"While faith makes all things possible, it is love that makes all things easy." - Evan Henry Hopkins
"Even as we speak, jealous time flees - seize this day, and put little faith in tomorrow." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
"Prayer is the voice of faith." - George Horne
"Let us fear the worst, but work with faith; the best will always take care of itself." - Victor Hugo
"Holiness is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands of love to men. It is faith gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and devotion breathing benediction on human suffering, while it goes up in intercession to the Father of all piety." - Frederick Dan Huntington
"Divisive forces are more powerful than those which make for union. Vested interests in language, philosophies of life, table manners, sexual habits, political, ecclesiastical and economic organizations are sufficiently powerful to block all attempts, by rational methods, to unite mankind for its own good. And there is nationalism. With the 57 varieties of tribal gods, nationalism is the religion of the 20th century. We may be Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians or Atheists; but the fact remains that there is only one faith for which large masses of us are prepared to die and kill, and that faith is nationalism." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"All the commandments follow three ways: faith, word, and deed. As one is basic in mathematics, so the essence of every commandment, whether it depends on speech or action, is faith of heart. If it has not that , all else is meaningless." - Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, also known as Ben Ezra or Abenezra
"Faith is expectation. Whatever you strongly and consistently expect to come into your life is invariably what you will experience... Faith is always accompanied by strong emotion. Faith can only extend to the self-imposed boundaries of your present consciousness." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
"You don’t gain faith, you discover it and you direct it. The issue is not how much faith you have, but where your faith is invested. You have faith on many different levels and in many different ways, but its most perfect expression is in your spiritual nature." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
"Let us never forget that, to be profited, that is, to be spiritually improved in knowledge, faith, holiness, joy and love, is the end of hearing sermons, and not merely to have our taste gratified by genius, eloquence and oratory." - John Angell James
"The whole defense of religious faith hinges upon action." - William James
"A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children." - Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
"If fear is cultivated it will become stronger. If faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery." - John Paul Jones
"We are each a cell in the common body. When we choose to create, to activate the Godness within us, our movements affect and influence the whole. But until we really know this at a cellular level, our commitment to our own awakening remains an act of faith." - Gloria D. Karpinski
"Dreamers are the architects of greatness. Their brains have wrought all human miracles... only cowardice and lack of faith can keep the seeker from his chosen goal; but if his heart be strong and if he dream enough and dream it hard enough, he can attain, no matter where men failed before." - Herbert Kaufman
"The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life." - Firuz Kazemzadeh
"Dark as my path may seem to others, I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way. Although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid toward the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where life and death are one in the presence of the Lord." -
"It need not discourage us if we are full of doubts. Healthy questions keep faith dynamic. In fact, unless we start with doubts we cannot have a deep-rooted faith. One who believes lightly and unthinkingly has not much of a belief. He who has a faith which is not to be shaken has won it through blood and tears - has worked his way from doubt to truth as one who reaches a clearing through a thicket of brambles and thorns." -
"There can be no progress if people have no faith in tomorrow." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"Religion is the individual's attitude toward God and man as expressed in faith, in worship, in life, and in service." - Charles Foster Kent
"Without risk, faith is an impossibility." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
"That is not faith, to see God only in what is strange and rare; but this is faith, to see God in what is most common and simple, to know God's greatness not so much from disorder as from order, not so much from those strange sights in which God seems (but only seems) to break His laws, as from those common ones in which He fulfills His laws." - Charles Kingsley
"The foundation of domestic happiness is faith in the virtue of woman." - Walter Savage Landor
"Let us have faith that right makes right, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." - Abraham Lincoln