#lit

Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world. ↗

— Sam Harris

#atheism #belief #ethics #humanism #religion

A true Democratic Spirit is up there with religious faith and emotional maturity and all those other top-of-the-Maslow-Pyramid-type qualities that people spend their whole lives working on. A Democratic Spirit's constituent rigor and humility and self-honesty are, in fact, so hard to maintain on certain issues that it's almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp's line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that he other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#humility #open-mindedness #faith

He was near tears, 'Who do I blame?' he kept asking me. 'There is no God.I can only blame myself.'" The Reb's face tightened, as if in pain. "That," he said, softly, "is a terrible self-indictment." Worse than an unanswered prayer? "Oh yes. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody's out there. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#faith

The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that the “sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew.” I have seen this unity with my eyes, heard it with my ears, felt it with all my being. ↗

— David James Duncan

#mysticism #religion #religious-freedom #spirituality #faith

Love manifests its reality in deeds, not only in words-these alone are without effect. ↗

— 'Abdu'l-Bahá

#inspirational #paris-talks #spirituality #faith

[Martin Luther King] said that little black boys and little black girls would be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers. Then he reminded both those spectators before him and all Americans that this hope of his, this faith, was rooted in the promise of America. ↗

— Keith Ellison

#civil-rights #inspirational #politics #promises #united

America operates under the notion of equality before the law. Basic fairness is an article of faith. We may not agree on everything all of the time, but we select our leaders together. And when we don’t want them anymore, we get rid of them. ↗

— Keith Ellison

#equality #politics #equality

Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality. ↗

— Malcolm Boyd

#entrenched #in my opinion #opinion #out #reality

Could a body broken and blood spilled two thousand years ago restore my own damaged life? ↗

— Frederica Mathewes-Green

#faith #meaning-of-life #orthodoxy #spirituality #faith

God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#christianity #faith #god #jesus-shock #philosophy