Quotes About Belief

In dogmatics our question is: What are we to think and say?

Everyone who must contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices for the devil to have lost his game.

Faith is rather a freedom, a permission. It is permitted to be so—that the believer in God's Word may hold on to this Word in everything, in spite of all that contradicts it.

The greatest hindrance to faith is again and again just the pride and anxiety of our human hearts.

He reconciles them with God through His death. That means that in His own death He makes their peace with God--before they themselves have decided for this peace and quite apart from that decision. In believing, they are only conforming to the decision about them that has already been made in Him.

No science of religion (history, psychology, or sociology of religion) understands the reality of religion. Science can know and understand religions without the investigator's belonging to or having faith in any of them. Real faith is not knowable.

Cuando tenía dieciocho años me vino el pensamiento de abandonar la Iglesia. Era para mí una exigencia de autenticidad, porque el pertenecer a la Iglesia no constituía algo indiferente, sino realmente una confesión, y una confesión tal, que fomentaba mucha necedad en el mundo, puesto que con ella existía una institución que sembraba el error. (...) Entre el destino y la voluntad / Schicksal und Wille

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions

Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice -- Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (July 11, 1868)

atheism" ... reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man. Marx, Letter to 30 November 1842

Perseus wore a magic cap down over his eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.

The more of himself man attributes to God, the less he has left in himself.

Man makes religion, religion does not make Man

What is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist

This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; the philosopher has never finished with incarnations.

The ruling ideas of each age have [n]ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

My mam told me not to tell many people about not being christened, as she said I would be a prime target for witches. To this day I don't know what she meant by that.

I never believed me mam when she finished a story with 'And they all lived happily ever after'. 'No, they didn't. I don't believe it,' I'd say. I prefered Humpty Dumpty – nice and short, and a realistic ending. He never hurt anyone, but he had a little accident and died. Shit happens. That's life, innit.

Ta?u, ja atmetam dzeju, reli?ija ir mor?lais kodekss, kas tiek izpausts caur le?end?m, m?tiem un vis?da veida liter?riem sacer?jumiem ar m?r?i izveidot tic?jumu, v?rt?bu un normu sist?mu,ar kuras pal?dz?bu regul?t k?du kult?ru vai sabiedr?bu.

inner" healing and changing of belief systems must take place before the disease is eradicated.

I don't think I'm nuts, though, and I don't think you do, either, but you have to make up your own mind. Nothing works if you don't start there.

If people believed in eternal damnation they might not be seizing the day quite so much.

I think there is something wrong with the human race. It undermines everything one would like to believe in, don't you think?