Quotes About Faith

BERTRAND RUSSELL, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, AND OTHER ESSAYS ON RELIGION AND RELATED SUBJECTS

All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith.

Those who would assail The Book of Mormon should bear in mind that its veracity is no more dubious than the veracity of the Bible, say, or the Qur'an, or the sacred texts of most other religions. The latter texts simply enjoy the considerable advantage of having made their public debut in the shadowy recesses of the ancient past, and are thus much harder to refute.

President George W. Bush, who believes he is an instrument of God and characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil.

Several were still pubescent girls, such as fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Kimball. Although she acquiesced when the prophet explained that God had commanded her to become his plural wife—and that she would be permitted twenty-four hours to comply—Helen later confided to a friend, "I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.

It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him up.

Preparing for the Kingdom of God meant making the world as like unto that Kingdom as possible, and the Kingdom was to be a new reality of restoration, redemption, renewal, and resurrection

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.2 —American motto suggested

We truly believed that we were on God's side, and in spite of everything—the beatings, the bombings, the burnings—God's truth would prevail," Lewis recalled. The anguish and the duration of the struggle was, in a way, a vindication of the premise of the struggle itself—that this was the ultimate battle to bring light to darkness no matter how often darkness prevailed.

Costly grace…is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

At seventy-five, Churchill said: "I am prepared to meet my Maker. But whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

There it was again: conscience. Lincoln believed he was acting according to motives higher than the merely political. "The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance," Lincoln had written to the Quaker Eliza P. Gurney in September. "Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us.

Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace….The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.

Now as then, the tradition of faith that drove Lewis is too often used not to pursue justice but to amass power. Now as then, many white Americans profess to believe the gospel. And now as then, too many are content to accede to religious teachings more in principle than in practice. My aim is to show how John Lewis did both—and if he did both, then perhaps more of us can, too.

The author of the document would one day come to believe that it was sacred scripture and that his writing desk was a holy object.

The founding religion—at least in the Declaration—was based more on a religion of reason than of revelation. But it was still religion.

religion. "I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy," Paine wrote. "I do not believe…in the creed of any church I know of.

solemn faithfulness, courage that cannot be daunted, hopefulness that cannot be dashed

As Lincoln remarked, "It is my private opinion that, if the Lord has been in Springfield once, he will never come the second time.

Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope in the usual acceptation of those words," Mary Lincoln recalled. "He never joined a Church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature.

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.

God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.

The distinctive feature of that religion lies in the meaning of the verse from Leviticus: that individual liberty for all—all, of any color or creed—is at the very center of the broad faith the Founders nurtured and passed on to us.