Religious Faith Quotes

• The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

  Albert Einstein

  Life, Motivational, God

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.49, Broadway Books

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• For what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see?

  Saint Augustine

  Inspirational, Faith, Religious

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• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, Motivational

  "Science, Philosophy, and Religion" (1940).

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• All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

  Thomas Paine

  Inspirational, Christian, Atheist

  Thomas Paine (1821). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine”, p.2

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• Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

  Saint Augustine

  Inspirational, Faith, Spiritual

  "Strive to Love, Anticipate with Hope, Believe in Faith". Book by Catherine Basten, 2004.

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• Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Happiness, Faith, Education

  Eleanor Roosevelt, Allida Mae Black (2013). “Courage in a Dangerous World: The Political Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt”, p.258, Columbia University Press

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• The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Motivational, Death, Faith

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• The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

  Douglas Adams

  Atheist, Faith Religion, Atheism

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.47, Pan Macmillan

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• Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Faith, Religious, Atheist

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.383, Penguin

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• A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Funny, Faith, Witty

  "The Antichrist". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888.

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• Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Atheist, Wall

  Reply to Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, and Stephen S. Nelson (committee of the Danbury, Conn., Baptist Association), 1 Jan. 1802

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• The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Faith, Spiritual, Religious

  Benjamin Franklin (1987). “Poor Richard's Almanack: Being the Choicest Morsels of Wisdom, Written During the Years of the Almanack's Publication”, p.16, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

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• I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

  Thomas Paine

  Atheist, Pain, Fear

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine”, p.4

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• There is a schizophrenic nature in modern politics. A leader is expected to have a religious faith but he is not supposed to let it influence him in his duties. Somehow, the truths that determine everything else about his existence are not allowed to influence how he conducts himself in public life. Not only that, his principles are usually considered so personal that the public is not even allowed to know for certain what they are. This passes for noble statecraft in our time. It was once thought cowardice.

  Stephen Mansfield

  Religious, Leader, Principles

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• In Barack Obama, Democrats have put forth a man of strong religious faith who is comfortable connecting his spiritual life to his public role as a policymaker.

  Mike McCurry

  Spiritual, Religious, Strong

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• My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there!

  Daniel Dennett

  Religious, Lying, Richard Feynman

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• The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Ideas, Mind

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Religious, Reason, Prove

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• What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Beautiful, Religious, Land

  Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Small Wonder”, p.48, Faber & Faber

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• Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature; they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Religious, Men, Aberration

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2003). “Democracy in America”, p.282, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Faith, Religious, Thinking

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• It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with.

  Mitt Romney

  Religious, Blessed, Exercise

  Mitt Romney's commencement address on gay marriage and religion at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 12, 2012.

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• Morals are built on religious faith. Virtue is built on morality and influences a culture.

  Michele Bachmann

  Religious, Culture, Morality

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• Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Real, Guarantees That

  "The Politics of Ignorance" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 2, 2005.

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• In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect - if you're a moderate on abortion, if you're a moderate on gun control, or if you're a moderate in your religious faith - it doesn't evolve into a crusade where you're either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

  Jimmy Carter

  Religious, Gun, Abortion

  "SUNDAY INTERVIEW -- A Statesman And a Man Of Faith / With a lifetime of public service to his credit, the former president reflects on the beliefs that have sustained him". Interview with Don Lattin, www.sfgate.com. January 12, 1997.

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