This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
Faith |
It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guarantee of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution.
Faith | Force | Free speech | Guarantee | Means | Order | Power | Reason | Rights | Speech | Child |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
To speak of love is not "preaching," for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.
Absence | Faith | Insight | Love | Means | Nature | Need | Reason |
The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given, the weather conditions that prevail at the ...moment.
Circumstances | Faith | Family | Opportunity | Will |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie, concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.
Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright
Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.
Faith | Reason | Understand |
I now exercize my fearless faith in three ways - by thinking, speaking and acting. I am unmoved by appearances, therefore appearances move.
Faith |
The wealth of rich feelings--the deep--the pure; With strength to meet sorrow, and faith to endure.
The principle of maximum diversity says that the laws of nature, and the initial conditions at the beginning of time, are such as to make the universe as interesting as possible. As a result, life is possible but not too easy. Maximum diversity often leads to maximum stress. In the end we survive, but only by the skin of our teeth. This is the confession of faith of a scientific heretic. Perhaps I may claim as evidence for progress in religion the fact that we no longer burn heretics.
Beginning | Diversity | Evidence | Faith | Life | Life | Progress | Religion | Universe |
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
May every soul that touches mine - be it the slightest contact - get there from some good; some little grace; one kindly thought; one aspiration yet unfelt; one bit of courage for the darkening sky; one gleam of faith to brave the thickening ills of life; one glimpse of brighter skies beyond the gathering mists - to make this life worthwhile.
Aspiration | Courage | Faith | Life | Life | Little | Soul | Aspiration |
Faith from its essential nature implies the fallen state of man, while it recognizes the principles of the covenant of grace. It is itself the condition of that covenant. It is a grace which is alike distinguished from the love of angels and the faith of devils. It is peculiar to the returning sinntr. None but a lost sinner needs it; none but a humbled sinner relishes it.
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.
Faith | Fault | Heart | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Philosophy | Fault | Intellect |
Faith, in fact, is right knowledge. For faith is not believing something which our intelligence denies. It is the choice of the nobler hypothesis. Faith is the resolve to place the highest meaning on the facts which we observe.
Choice | Faith | Intelligence | Meaning | Right |
The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.