Faith Reason Quotes

Faith is a continuation of reason. ~ William Adams

Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth. ~ Pope John Paul II

We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man. ~ Sam Harris

Everybody in this life has their challenges and difficulties. That is part of our mortal test. The reason for some of these trials cannot be readily understood except on the basis of faith and hope because there is often a larger purpose which we do not always understand. Peace comes through hope. ~ James E. Faust

Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason. For indeed it is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier man. ~ Elton Trueblood

You believe it can't happen to you until it does, and it's too late ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Religion doesn't just cloud our minds. It asks us to deliberately deceive ourselves
to replace reason with its opposite, faith. And when men operate on faith, they can no longer be reasoned with, which makes them more dangerous than any sane man, good or evil. ~ James L. Sutter

Just another lonely broken hero picking up the pieces of my mind. Running out of faith and hope and reason, I'm running out of time. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Being that 'reason is not antithetical to faith' (Woods) and that Pentecost established the Reality of super-nature (Lewis) and that 'theology matters' (Wimber), then 'empowered evangelicalism' (Nathan) is the natural expression of discipleship."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted. ~ Albert Pike

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. ~ C.S. Lewis

All truth is double, and perhaps multiple; absolute reason is as dangerous as absolute faith; reason also has its madness ~ Carlos Fuentes

Faith is a higher faculty than reason. ~ H. C. Bailey

In the modern era, many thinkers began to mistrust faith, viewing it as 'blind' and an enemy of reason. Their watchword was 'reason alone.' One of the difficulties of this stance is that reason cannot test its own reliability, any more than soapstone can test its own hardness. Any argument, accomplished by reasoning, that what reasoning accomplishes can be trusted, would be circular, because it would take for granted the very thing that it was trying to prove.
Suppose I am at the window of a burning building. Although I can hear the firemen calling to me from far below, I cannot see them because of all the smoke. They are telling me to jump. Though I may have every reason to believe that they will catch me in their net, I may not trust them enough to overcome my fear, and so, hesitating, I burn to death. Obviously, my reasons are not the same as trust; faith surpasses reason. Even so they are reasons for trust; though faith surpasses reason, it is not irrational. ~ J. Budziszewski

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There ~ G.K. Chesterton

He that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to Defender of the Faith, than George the Third. ~ Thomas Paine

God is good only when everything is good. When everything is bad, the devil takes control; god reappears when everything is in order once again. That's what my pastor taught me. ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

I wear my faith on my sleeve."

~R. Alan Woods [2012] ~ R. Alan Woods

If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous ... There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. ~ Blaise Pascal

In asking for a relic of Descartes, the chevalier de Terlon was standing at the crossroads of the ancient and modern. He was applying to a modern thinker - the inventor of analytic geometry, no less - a primitive tradition that extends back not only to the institutionalization of Christianity in the fourth century, when Christians first broke into the tombs of saints to gather relics, but farther still, beyond the horizon of recorded history. The request is all the stranger for the fact that the man whose remains were treated in this quasisaintlike way would go down in history as the progenitor of materialism, rationalism, and a whole tradition that looked on such veneration as nonsense. ~ Russell Shorto

The question is not, who uses faith and who uses reason? Everyone uses both. The question instead should be, who has the most reasonable faith? ~ J.F. Baldwin

The idea persists that faith is a remnant of an ancient way of life, a way of knowing that asks for unthinking acceptance of a belief system or adherence to specific dogma. This may be the case for some spiritual traditions, but the Buddha insisted that his disciples investigate his teachings with the powers of reason, test them in the inner laboratory of meditation, and build their faith on a firm foundation of knowledge. As a result, faith in the Dharma implies faith in one's ability to recognize truth when it presents itself and to take responsibility for verifying it through analysis and meditative experience. ~ Dharma Publishing

If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most. ~ Penn Jillette

I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground, unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

What kind of God is it who's upset by a cartoon in Danish?
[Interview with Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason, June 23, 2006] ~ Salman Rushdie

It is not reason which makes faith hard, but life. ~ Jean Ingelow

Reason excludes faith," Alessandro responded, watching the blood-red mite as it made a dash for the rim. "It's deliberately limited. It won't function with the materials of religion. You can come close to proving the existence of God by reason, but you can't do it absolutely. That's because you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason. God is a postulate. I don't think God is interested in the verification of His existence, and, therefore, neither am I. Anyway, I have professional reasons to believe. Nature and art pivot faithfully around God. Even dogs know that. ~ Mark Helprin

We don't have faith in reason; we use reason because, unlike revelation, it produces results and understanding. Even discussing why we should use reason employs reason! ~ Jerry A. Coyne

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot. ~ Voltaire

Faith without reason produces a mindless Christianity which is less than useless; the focus on justice in this world produces a theology that chases its own tail."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Reason is neutral. It has no biases. It has no agendas. There are no personal interests at stake. Reason simply says, "Here is the data, be responsible with it." As such, reason is impartial. ~ Michael Vito Tosto

There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, 'and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.' I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 'they stand to reason.' Even the official mind does not escape this faith. ("Reason and Unreason") ~ W.B.Yeats

FAITH is not the LAST OPTION left,
It is the FIRST REASON to STAND FIRM
in what we BELIEVED ~ Julie Jenifer

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. ~ Sam Harris

To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap. ~ Jostein Gaarder

For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love. ~ William Peter Blatty

We have faith in the potentialities of others, of ourselves, and of mankind because, and only to the degree to which, we have experienced the growth of our own potentialities, the reality of growth in ourselves, the strength of our own power of reason and love. ~ Erich Fromm

For faith, properly understood, does not contradict reason in the least; indeed ... it is nothing less than the will to keep one's mind fixed precisely on what reason has discovered to it. ~ Edward Feser

My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason. ~ Norman Cousins

Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong. To win a bloodless battle, the victory is long. A simple act of faith, reason over might. To blow up his children would only prove him right. ~ Sting

You can not know but can pray into what lies ahead. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There is no reason to feel lost, for: Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, No birth, identity, form
no object of the world, Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; ... The body, sluggish, aged, cold
the embers left from earlier fires, ... shall duly flame again. ~ Nicholas Sparks

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century. ~ Noam Chomsky

It is extremely difficult for believers, if not impossible, to draw a clear line between the facts and fantasies of their beliefs. Most often they are raised as children in the cradle of faith and, before they ever become capable of judging the truth or falsehood of their beliefs, they already become an integral part of their system. The few who awaken from their mental state of lethargy and oblivion do so at the cost of their religion but seldom admit this fact publicly. They keep wearing the same garb under the same title so that despite the loss of faith their religion continues to survive merely as a symbol of identity. This, unfortunately, is the fate of all religions which deny rationality any instrumental role in judging the validity of their beliefs. ~ Mirza Tahir Ahmad

The Prophet himself was a model of equity toward those who did not share his faith. Through ~ Tariq Ramadan

Whiteness is not a culture. There is Irish culture and Italian culture and American culture - the latter, as Albert Murray pointed out, a mixture of the Yankee, the Indian, and the Negro (with a pinch of ethnic salt); there is youth culture and drug culture and queer culture; but there is no such thing as white culture. Whiteness has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with social position. It is nothing but a reflection of privilege, and exists for no reason other than to defend it. Without the privileges attached to it, the white race would not exist, and the white skin would have no more social significance than big feet. ~ Noel Ignatiev

Someday someone will write a pathology of experimental physics and bring to light all those swindles which subvert our reason, beguile our judgement and, what is worse, stand in the way of any practical progress. The phenomena must be freed once and for all from their grim torture chamber of empiricism, mechanism, and dogmatism; they must be brought before the jury of man's common sense. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Ridicule may be the evidence of with or bitterness and may gratify a little mind, or an ungenerous temper, but it is no test of reason or truth. ~ Tryon Edwards

What makes the Bible's miracle stories so compelling is the idea that God cares about people's suffering, not simply their "spiritual blindness" or "spiritual poverty" but also their actual blindness and actual poverty. The apostle Paul insisted to the Corinthian church that the physical resurrection of Jesus, as witnessed by more than five hundred people, portends the resurrection of all who have died, all who have suffered, and that without it "our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14). ~ Rachel Held Evans

The cross the preacher had told him about was bloody, not flaming; meek, not militant. It had made him feel awe and wonder, not fear and panic. It had made him want to kneel and cry, but this cross made him want to curse and kill. ~ Richard Wright

Our own evil inclinations are far more dangerous than any external enemies. ~ Ambrose

Gratitude gives infinite fullness of life. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Believe nothing, no matter who said it, even if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense ~ Buda

The John Birch Society is Communism's greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

Mahmud's highly mobile army rarely fell below the force of 100,000 that he amassed to attack Balkh in 999.5 In recruiting and deploying his slave soldiers, Mahmud was blind to color, ethnicity, and religion. He did not hesitate, for example, to send Hindu forces against the Turkic, Persian, or Indian armies that were defending Muslim cities. Even his own household consisted mainly of slaves. Far from being constrained by his Muslim faith, Mahmud believed that the highest religious authority, the caliph, had validated his actions and confirmed all the dubious privileges he so freely exercised. ~ S. Frederick Starr

Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user. ~ Isaac Asimov

Did you realize you have fully armed invisible army surrounding you, whose goal is to destroy you spiritually? Satan and his minions have thousands of years of experience destroying the faith of Christians bigger, stronger, and more mature than you and I. What hope do we have? Our only hope to protect us from Satan's barrage of spiritual warfare is Jesus Christ and our dependence on Him!"
Al Menconi

(www.AlMenconi.com) ~ Al Menconi

You don't get to be a keeper of the faith without being a keeper of your brother. ~ Johnathan Key

Our preaching is not the reason the Word works. The Word is the reason our preaching works. ~ H.B. Charles Jr.

Christian magazine Sojourners, likes to point out that the Bible contains more than three thousand references to alleviating poverty - enough reason, he thinks, for making this a central moral issue for Christians. ~ Peter Singer

To how many is the death of the beloved the parent of faith! ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

We frequently do good in order to enable us to do evil later with impunity exemption of punishment. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Science trumps magical thinking: there was a reason the Incas called their mercury mine 'la mina de los muertos,' the mine of the dead. Building a life and a community upon principles that ignore such realities is doomed to fail. ~ Floyd Skloot

We believe that part of the answer lies in pricing energy on the basis of its full costs to society. One reason we use energy so lavishly today is that the price of energy does not include all of the social costs of producing it. The costs incurred in protecting the environment and the health and safety of workers, for example, are part of the real costs of producing energy-but they are not now all included in the price of the product. ~ Richard M. Nixon

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations ~ Faith Baldwin

There's nae reasoning wi some cats. You say 'reason', they mew 'treason'. Ken? ~ Irvine Welsh

The holy people delights in the Lord. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Can I tell you something that I've thought every time I've woken up next to you." - V
"Please"-Jane
"You are the reason I get out of bed ever night. And you're the reason I can't wait to come home every dawn. Not the war. Not the Brothers. Not even Butch. It's ... you." -V ~ J.R. Ward

One reason I can be more tolerant than most is that as a therapist I have the advantage of information about my patients that most people are not privy to. And I discover that we rarely if ever see the totality of another in ordinary social intercourse. When an individual appears mean and lazy, we are only seeing one part of the person, elicited by a particular set of circumstances on a particular day, and we do well to wait a while before concluding that what we see is the whole person. ~ Alan Loy McGinnis

As for the status of Western Christianity, we are in a place where our task is to redefine the primary symbols of our faith or tradition in a more human direction. That's the thing I spend my time doing. ~ John Shelby Spong

Working in the arts, you see people who come from terrible circumstances and who, for whatever reason, have incredible talent. But of course, with that great talent comes some guilt because, if you come from circumstances that don't encourage it, it can be really confusing. ~ Jesse Eisenberg