Top 100 Quotes About Faith And Reason
#1. In Scripture, faith involves placing trust in what you have reason to believe is true. Faith is not a blind, irrational leap into the dark. So faith and reason cooperate on a biblical view of faith. They are not intrinsically hostile.
J.P. Moreland
#2. The battle for the lead between faith and reason can be settled by accepting the guiding hand of an experienced navigator.
Elaine Orabona Foster
#3. Marriage is an institution that existed before governments existed. It's something that reflects nature and reflects God and God's will for us. And both from the standpoint of faith and reason it makes all the sense in the world. And it's beneficial for society.
Rick Santorum
#4. It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
Sam Harris
#5. The more one delves into Rumi's life and his mystical poetry it becomes clear that for him, the issue of faith and reason is incomplete unless one includes the central theme of love.
Rumi
#6. One of the characteristics of early modern thought was a tendency to assume binary contrasts. In an attempt to define phenomena more exactly, categories of experience that had once co-inhered were now set off against each other: faith and reason, intellect and emotion, and church and state.
Karen Armstrong
#7. The balance between faith and reason is for the determination of each individual, and of the people as a whole, not of unauthorized government officials uttering impious humbug as they arbitrarily try to define that balance.
Conrad Black
#8. Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth.
Pope John Paul II
#9. Some say while religious fundamentalists betray reason. Moderates betray faith and reason equally. -Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion(Documentary)
Sam Harris
#10. Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#11. God has disclosed himself in descriptive terms that give us enough information to be able to know who he is, and he has hidden enough of himself for us to learn the balance between faith and reason.
Ravi Zacharias
#12. The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact.
Leslie Stephen
#13. By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.
Sam Harris
#14. One of the things I reject in our cultural divisions is the clash between faith and reason, and I would say the same about mystery and intellect. They are somehow mysteriously akin to each other.
Krista Tippett
#15. Faith and reason are indeed complementary faculties that we use to think about the truth. When any winged creature (or mechanism) tries to fly on just one wing, it falls to the ground. In a similar way, when we human beings try to wing it with just one faculty, we crash.
Scott Hahn
#16. In the woods is perpetual youth. In the woods we return to faith and reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#17. Faith and reason are the shoes on your feet. You can travel further with both than you can with just one.
J. Michael Straczynski
#18. I argue that in a world where people must support their opinions with evidence and reason rather than faith, we would experience less conflict over issues like assisted suicide, gay rights, birth control, and sexual morality.
Jerry A. Coyne
#19. Too often today, we do not rely on faith so much as on our own ability to reason and solve problems.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#20. I've left the Church - for many reasons that I've written about publicly - but it's still a large part of my identity, and I still have my faith, if not my Church.
Julianna Baggott
#21. Faith is belief without reason; we operate on reason and nothing but. I have zero faith in my crew, just absolute confidence.
Iain M. Banks
#22. Hide your gold, your faith and the reason of you journey.
Eduard Heine
#23. I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.
Isaac Asimov
#24. A man should remind himself that an object of faith is not scientifically demonstrable, lest presuming to demonstrate what is of faith, he should produce inconclusive reasons and offer occasion for unbelievers to scoff at a faith based on such ground.
Thomas Aquinas
#25. So it is with human reason, which strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it.
Martin Luther
#26. Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion.
Richard Dawkins
#27. My faith inspires me so much. It is the very reason that I run. I feel that my running is completely a gift from God and it is my responsibility to use it to glorify him.
Allyson Felix
#28. ... beg Love's pardon for your want of faith. Helen chose you without reason because she loves you without cause; embrace her without question and watch your weather change.
John Barth
#29. Its helpful to know the reasons for our faith ... it helps us not be so vulnerable to doubt, and it helps us not be so vulnerable to false doctrine.
Holly Ordway
#30. Reason tells the soul how mistaken it is in thinking that all these earthly things are of the slightest value by comparison with what it is seeking. A little recollection reminds it that all these things come to an end. And faith instructs it in what the soul must do to find satisfaction ...
Eknath Easwaran
#31. As I lay in the late hours of night or perhaps the wee hours of morning, I felt content. I'd been right to keep faith and trust when I had no reason to. I didn't expect any grand gestures or magical solutions to things, but my hope was fueled.
J.M. Northup
#32. She had lived her whole life on shifting quicksand, where reason and the intellect were not to be trusted, where only faith was valid, and blind faith was sacred. She, herself, had enforced mindless conformity to that empty evil.
Terry Goodkind
#33. Faith is not opposed to reason, but it is sometimes opposed to feelings and appearances.
Timothy Keller
#34. To the extent that in one's act of faith one participates in the truth through reason and heart, faith already implies a particular level of knowledge and of certainty.
Osman Bakar
#35. [Patriotism] is in itself a kind of religion: it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and sentiment.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. I am pleading for the future; I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men. When we can learn by, reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.
Clarence Darrow
#39. The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil's masterpiece.
Sam Harris
#40. Revelation in matters where reason cannot judge, or but probably, ought to be hearkened to. First, Whatever proposition is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason.
John Locke
#42. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.
G.K. Chesterton
#43. If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
Denis Diderot
#44. Faith is the master, and reason the maid-servant.
Martin Luther
#45. What is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities - the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net of there's so little fish to catch?
Yann Martel
#46. My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.
Norman Cousins
#47. The highest function of humanity is belief, that activity of spirit that proceeds upon the pathway of reason, until it comes to some great promontory, and then spreads its wings, and upon the basis of its earlier journeying, takes eternity into its grasp.
G. Campbell Morgan
#48. I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#49. Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason's light.
Terry Goodkind
#50. Intuition is not a single way of knowing - it's our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we've developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith
and reason.
Brene Brown
#51. The White House, in advancing the agenda for a [school] "choice" plan, rests its faith on market mechanisms. What reason have the black and very poor to lend their credence to a market system that has proved so obdurate and so resistant to their pleas at every turn?
Jonathan Kozol
#52. 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
#53. Reason is a tool to help us better understand and defend our faith; as Anselm put it, ours is a faith that seeks understanding.
William Lane Craig
#54. I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life.
Leo Tolstoy
#55. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God
Thomas Jefferson
#56. Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.
Sam Harris
#57. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
Mikhail Bakunin
#59. It is a life of FAITH, not of intellect and reason, but a life of knowing Who makes us go.
Oswald Chambers
#60. I don't believe there's a reason for everything, and having faith doesn't mean I'm blind. I believe people make poor choices. I believe bad things happen to good people. I believe there's evil in the word that I will never understand, but will never stop fighting.
Tammara Webber
#61. Sweep up the debris of decaying faith;
Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out out beliefs,
And throw your soul wide open to the light of reason and of knowledge.
Be not afraid
To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
#62. The reason some of us are such poor specimens of Christianity is because we have no Almighty Christ. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment to Jesus Christ.
Oswald Chambers
#63. I have great faith that there's a master plan and that even if we don't understand it and even if it's heartbreaking, there's a reason for everything. And I hold on to that.
Terri Irwin
#64. Neither tolerance nor intolerance is grounded in science and reason, but they are themselves acts of faith grounded in social custom and the politics of expediency and power
John Money
#66. For me, my faith is the reason I run. I definitely feel I have this amazing gift that God has blessed me with, and it's all about using it to the best of my ability.
Allyson Felix
#67. For just as the first general precepts of the law of nature are self-evident to one in possession of natural reason, and have no need of promulgation, so also that of believing in God is primary and self-evident to one who has faith: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is.
Thomas Aquinas
#68. The reason that people do not have a rich, beautiful faith is that their spirit is denied the privilege of communion and fellowship with the Father.
John G. Lake
#69. Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender.
Dan Barker
#70. The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely - which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.
Sydney J. Harris
#71. The basic cause of totalitarianism is two ideas: men's rejection of reason in favor of faith, and of self-interest in favor of self-sacrifice. If
Ayn Rand
#72. 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
#73. On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.
Fernando Pessoa
#74. Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarrelling with one another.
Abhijit Naskar
#75. What is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason.
Voltaire
#76. Conscious auto-suggestion, made with confidence, faith, and perseverance realizes itself automatically, in all matters within reason.
Emile Coue
#77. Catholics have always held that the soul is immeasurably more important than the body. Therefore, one who destroys the faith and grace that are the life of the soul is more guilty than one who merely kills the body. For this reasonable attitude there is surely no reason to apologize.
Diane Moczar
#78. The chief characteristics of the [liberal] attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith.
Chester Bowles
#79. Reason and Faith are not antithetical, but rather synergistic.
R. Alan Woods
#80. Philosophic argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that
Daniel Webster
#81. An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns.
Terry Eagleton
#82. Our requests are necessary expressly to strengthen our faith, through which alone we can be saved. 'By grace are we saved through faith' (Eph. 2:8). 'O woman, great is your faith' (Mt. 15:28). For this reason the Lord made the woman pray earnestly, in order to awaken her faith and to strengthen it.
John Of Kronstadt
#83. Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith.
Ravi Zacharias
#84. Never have I greater reason for suspicion that when I am particularly pleased with myself, my faith, my progress, and my alms.
Christian Scriver
#85. I have my faith, and that is a strong anchor. I will not stop praying. I believe all things happen for a reason. We may not see it right now, but Londy will be vindicated, and God will work all this out for the best.
Janice Cantore
#86. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
J.M. Barrie
#87. Or if she just preferred a world where hope and creativity and faith trump reason?
Jandy Nelson
#88. To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect,
A.C. Grayling
#89. Reason is one thing and faith is another and reason can as little be made a substitute for faith, as faith can be made a substitute for reason.
John Henry Newman
#90. There are subjects where reason cannot take us far and we have to accept things on faith. Faith then does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason.
Mahatma Gandhi
#91. If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.
Dan Barker
#92. I found a religion that blended scientific reason with spiritual reality in a unifying faith far removed from the headlines of violence, destruction and terrorism.
Cat Stevens
#93. Modernity gone wrong has isolated humanity and made human reason autonomous of (and dismissive toward) revelation.
John Mark Reynolds
#94. Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#95. Reason and faith are both banks of the same river.
Domenico Cieri
#96. A traveler. By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's. Then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
William Shakespeare
#97. I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly: and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason.
John Locke
#98. These are strange times. Reason, which once combatted faith and seemed to have conquered it, now has to look to faith to save it from dissolution.
Johan Huizinga
#99. Nobody gets argued all the way into becoming a believer on the sheer basis of logic and reason. That requires a leap of faith.
Francis Collins
#100. The religious wars showed that the Christian faith was no longer Europe's unifying force. A new common ground was needed, and it was found in reason, which is something that is shared by all of mankind. This was one of the roots of the Enlightenment and its concept of universal human rights.
Walter Kasper
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