Quotes About Belief

If reason is a rebel unto faith, so is passion unto reason.

For although in that ancient and diffused adoration of Idols, unto the Priests and subtiler heads, the worship perhaps might be symbolical, and as those Images some way related unto their Deities; yet was the Idolatry direct and down-right in the people; whose credulity is illimitable, who may be made believe that any thing is God; and may be made believe there is no God at all.

His argument runs like this: there is no goodness without free will. Without the ability to freely choose-or reject-the good, an individual possesses no control over his own soul, and without that control, there is not possibility of attaining grace. In the language of Christianity, a beliver cannot be saved unless the choice to follow Christ is freely made, unless the option not to follow him genuinely exists. Compelled belief is no belief at all.

The most urgent and demanding question for Christian believers is not whether "a supreme being of some kind" exists, but rather whether this incomparably good and powerful and compassionate source and end of all things truly is as revealed in Scripture

Yet to decide that this One exists is not quite like deciding that anything else exists. For this decision assumes a wider implication that the decider shall order his or her life around the existence of this One, if this One exists at all. It is not merely a casual or theoretical decision that makes no necessary difference to the way one lives the rest of one's life

A critical, probing faith is a necessary and useful stage toward an assured and confirmed faith (Job 3:1–26; Clement of Alex., Stromata 8.9; Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel).

I now understand that I would never have been able to become a plausible critic of the absurdities of modern consciousness until I myself had experienced them. I did not become an orthodox believer or theologian until after I tried out most of the errors long rejected by Christianity. If my first forty years were spent hungering for meaning in life, the last forty have been spent in being fed. If the first forty were prodigal, the last forty have been a homecoming.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

Skepticism means, not intellectual doubt alone, but moral doubt.

Be not a slave of words.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope.

The Age of Miracles is forever here!

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

The Everlasting Yea.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man.

The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against disbelief

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ

Not our logical faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us. I might say, priest and prophet to lead us to heaven-ward, or magician and wizard to lead us hellward.