Quotes About Faith

As long as man sees religion as a source of satisfaction for his own needs, it is not God whom he serves but his own self.

This was a religious problem, my father felt; people can want to be deceived. Do not deceive, the Kotzker rebbe insisted, and that also means do not deceive oneself by being gullible.

the love of truth is an act of the spirit.

There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God.

For Sinai consisted of both a divine proclamation and a human perception. It was a moment in which God was not alone.

To be a Jew is to renounce allegiance to false gods; to be sensitive to God's infinite stake in every finite situation; to bear witness to His presence in the hours of His concealment; to remember that the world is unredeemed. We are born to be an answer to His question.

A longing for things material is an instrument by which one may approach the love of God; even through coarse desires one may come to love the Creator.

The great dream of Judaism is not to raise priests, but a people of priests; to consecrate all men, not only some men.

There is a high cost of living to be paid by a Jew. He has to be exalted in order to be normal in a world that is neither propitious for nor sympathetic to his survival.

In trying to understand Jewish existence a Jewish philosopher must look for agreement with the men of Sinai as well as with the people of Auschwitz.

Judaism is God's quest for man.

It is not utility that we seek in religion but eternity.

We must never forget that there is a higher truth than the one we are able to comprehend at first sight.

The Bible is to be understood by the spirit that grows with it, wrestles with it, and prays with it.

Thus Judaism is based upon a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation, upon the will of God and upon the understanding of Israel.

the precedence of faith over knowledge. "When at Sinai Israel said we shall do and we shall hear (instead of saying, we shall hear and we shall do), a heavenly voice went forth and exclaimed,"Who has revealed to My children this mystery, which the ministering angels enact, to fulfill His word before they hear the voice."1

Faith is vision, sensitivity and attachment to God; piety is an attempt to attain such sensitivity and attachment. The gates of faith are not ajar, but the mitsvah is a key. By living as Jews we may attain our faith as Jews. We do not have faith because of deeds; we may attain faith through sacred deeds. A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought.

But the meaning is to walk in the ways of the Lord. As He clothes the naked so do thou also clothe the naked; as He visited the sick, so do thou also visit the sick; as he comforted mourners, so do Thou also comfort mourners" (Sotah 14a).

The plea is not to obey what He wills but to do what He is.

To the religious man it is as if things stood with their backs to him, their faces turned to God, as if the glory of things consisted in their being an object of divine care.

Religion is an answer to man's ultimate questions. The moment we become oblivious to ultimate questions, religion becomes irrelevant, and its crisis sets in.

Faith is not a product of our will. It occurs without intention, without will. Words expire when uttered, and faith is like the silence that draws lovers near, like a breath that shares in the wind.

In moments of great crisis they all fail—priests, philosophers, scientists—the prophets alone prevail.

Two sources of religious thinking are given us: memory (tradition) and personal insight. We must rely on our memory and we must strive for fresh insight.