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Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.

— Walter Kaufmann The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

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Faith

More quotes by Walter Kaufmann

The most obvious failure of organized religions is surely that almost all of them have made a mockery of what their founders taught.

The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

Renouncing false beliefs will not usher in the millennium.

The Faith of a Heretic (1959)

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

paraphrasing Nietzsche, The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future.

Time is an Artist (1978)

For atheism and polytheism there is no special problem of suffering, nor need there be for every kind of monotheism.

The Faith of a Heretic (1961)

All Walter Kaufmann quotes →

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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr (1787)

I had never doubted my own abilities, but I was quite prepared to believe that "the world" would decline to recognize them.

Colin Wilson Postscript to the Outsider (1967)

Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."

Jonathan Edwards Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter Kaufmann (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.