Quotes About Faith

To the child, the savage, and the Wall Street operator everything seems possible, hence their credulity.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves. [...] The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its roots in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.

It is perhaps true that the criminal who embraces a holy cause is more ready to risk his life and go to extremes in its defense than people who are awed by the sanctity of life and property.

The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature;

For though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image.

A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. And, as one would expect, the feeling of guilt promotes hate and brazenness. Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds. 73 It

It is the true believer's ability to "shut his eyes and stop his ears" to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence.

in order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness.

Belief passes, but to have believed never passes.     18

The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves.

Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move.

The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others.

All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world.

People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement. The prospect of an individual career cannot stir them to a mighty effort, nor can it evoke in them faith and a single-minded dedication.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Even the righteous man is just a sinner living in between sins.

even the righteous man is just a sinner livin in between sins!

Sometimes you have to let people change and grow on their own, you have to back off and hope it turns out for the best.

Chiquita was dancing with a brother who was so old I'd bet he used to baby-sit God.

If I carried Catherine to the top of Mount Corcovado and placed her before the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Jesus would close his eyes and turn his back on her. If she touched his feet, the six million stone tiles that covered the religious figure would catch fire and fall like fiery rain

His rod, his staff, it comforted me.

The black man has been manipulated by the offspring of the evil bastards who kidnapped and enslaved his forefathers. A black man using the white man's Bible is the best example of Stockholm syndrome to date. If blacks are in a white man's heaven, they are janitors and maids.