Great Throughts Treasury

"A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your" -

"Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong." - Simone Weil

"Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith." - John Wesley

"We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good." - John Greenleaf Whittier

"Vision looks inward and becomes duty. Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration. Vision looks upward and becomes faith." -

"Prayer is not a monologue. It speaks to God and to the community. In the last analysis, religion is not what goes on inside a soul. It is what goes on in the world, between people, between us and God. To trap faith in a monologue, and pretend that it resides solely inside the self, undermines the true interchange of all belief." - David J. Wolpe

"Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought of human Being, Eternity, and God." - William Wordsworth

"I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you." - Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright

"If there cannot be immediate unity of faith, there must be unity of love, expressing itself in common effort in social, economic and political relations." - John Joseph Wright

"Faith is a free choice; wherever there is a desire of proof... there is no faith." - Alexander Yelchaninov

"A lively, disinterested, persistent looking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism or doubt" -

"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. 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." - Dan Barker

"Faith is not evidence." - Dan Barker

"I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple." - Albert Einstein

"Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it - likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them." -

"While irrational faith is the acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority says so, rational faith is rooted in an independent conviction based upon one's own productive observing and thinking in spite of the majority's opinion." -

"In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith." -

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope or confidence." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." - Douglas MacArthur

"Vision needs both faith and strategy to become reality." - Eboo Patel

"We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality." - Patroclus or Patroklos NULL

"If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience." -

"Progress is what happens when inevitability yields to necessity. And it is an article of the democratic faith that progress is a basic law of life." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson

"Progress is what happens when inevitability yields to necessity. And it is an article of the democratic faith that progress is a basic law of life." -

"Progress is what happens when inevitability yields to necessity. And it is an article of the democratic faith that progress is a basic law of life." -

"Suffering is born of wrong thinking. The root of pain is error in perception . There can be no error in Truth, only errors in the perception of Truth. If you yearn to end human suffering, know, then, what is Real, for this Knowledge is the only source of invincible faith." - Alan Cohen

"Suffering is born of wrong thinking. The root of pain is error in perception . There can be no error in Truth, only errors in the perception of Truth. If you yearn to end human suffering, know, then, what is Real, for this Knowledge is the only source of invincible faith." -

"Suffering is born of wrong thinking. The root of pain is error in perception . There can be no error in Truth, only errors in the perception of Truth. If you yearn to end human suffering, know, then, what is Real, for this Knowledge is the only source of invincible faith." -

"It is faith and not reason which impels men to action. Intelligence is content to point out the road but never drives along it." - Alexis Carrel

"Your character is developed according to your faith. This is the primary religious truth from which no one can escape." - Alfred North Whitehead

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

"There lives more faith in honest doubt - believe me - than in half the creeds." -

"Faith is belief without evidence, in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

"No one in good faith can ever be lost." - A.J. Cronin, fully Archibald Joseph "A.J." Cronin

"Thinking for oneself is always arduous and is sometimes painful. The temptation to stop thinking and to take dogma on faith is strong. Yet, since the intellect does possess the capacity to think for itself, it also has the impulse and feels the obligation. We may therefore feel sure that the intellect will always refuse, sooner or later, to take traditional doctrines on trust." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

"A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets." - Arthur C Clarke, formally Sir Arthur Charles Clark

"The man who believes firmly that the Creator of the universe loves him and cares infinitely what he dose with his life - this man is automatically freed from much of the self-distrust that afflicts less certain men. Fear, guilt, hostility, anger - these are the emotions that stifle thought and impede action. By reducing or eliminating them, religious faith makes boldness possible, and boldness makes achievement possible." - Arthur Gordon

"The contemporary divorce between faith and reason is not the result of a contest for power or for intellectual monopoly, but of a progressive estrangement without hostility or drama, and therefore all the more deadly." - Arthur Koestler

"The way of exoteric religion is to progressively replace egoism by submission to the will of God. Its four cardinal demands are faith, love, humility, and good deeds. In so far as they are complied with, they effectively bring a man towards Self-realization, even though he does not consciously envisage this. True, the Goal is not likely to be attained in this lifetime, but in God’s patience a lifetime is very little. Faith strengthens the intuitional conviction of the reality of God or the Self. Humility, its counterpart, weakens the belief in the ego and lessens the importance attached to it. Love strives to surrender the ego to God and its welfare to others. Good deeds deny egoism in practice and are alike the fruit and proof of love and humility." - Arthur W Osborn

"Affliction appears to be the guide to reflection; the teacher of humility; the parent of repentance; the nurse of faith; the strengthener of patience, and the promoter of charity." - Author Unknown NULL

"Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith." - Author Unknown NULL

"It takes vision and courage to create. It takes faith and courage to prove." - Author Unknown NULL

"What roots are to a tree, belief is to the soul. Great oak trees have great roots. Great souls have great faith. However, the faith that holds has spiritual qualities. The stable man has that intangible confidence in himself with capacities to be and to do, a recognition of God who may transform and empower his life, and a determined effort to realize man's highest ideals." - Author Unknown NULL

"Faith without reason leads to superstition: Reason without faith leads to cynicism." - Author Unknown NULL

"When God wants to punish a man, He deprives him of faith." - Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer

"A great city whose image dwells on the memory of man is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; faith hovers over Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world-art." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

"If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'" - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"A man consists of the faith that is in him. Whatever his faith is, he is." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

"The faith of every man accords with his essential nature; man here is made up of faith; as a man’s faith is, so is he." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

"Humanity is not an accident, and life has profound meaning... We discover the true meaning of life only when we turn to God in faith and commitment." - Billy Graham, formally William Franklin "Billy" Graham