Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.
He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.
To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. Religious beliefs give a spurious spiritual dimension to tribal enmities.
There are certain ways you have to delude yourself. Self-delusion is important, for instance in family life. You know what I mean? If you're in love with your wife you have to go in there with blind faith. You have to support everything. And with your kids, you have to believe that you're doing something that has higher purpose; even though you don't have any evidence that that's the way it's going to turn out.
Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. When man rejects reason as his standard of judgement, only one alternative standard remains to him: his feelings. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feelings with knowledge
I regard belief as a form of brain damage.
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.
Faith is not a blind, irrational conviction. In order to believe, we must know what we believe, and the grounds on which our faith rests.
On any longer view, man is only fitfully committed to the rational -- to thinking, seeing, learning, knowing. Believing is what he's really proud of.
