Dani Shapiro Quotes

Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one's faith is, the more it whets one's reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.

The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.

My reason nourishes my faith and my faith my reason.

Faith is not contrary to reason.

To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.

Many children are taught to believe in God. I came to believe in the power of systems analysis.

My wife is a Christian and is extraordinary patient, logical, and philosophical. For years, I would challenge and condemn her beliefs, battering the structure of her conclusions with every argument, analogy, and evidence I could bring to bear. I am a very argumentative man, and I am as fell and subtle as a serpent in debate.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

I cannot have God in my heart if he is not in my head. Before I can believe in, I must believe that.

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.

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

It is not the Head but the Heart that is the Seat of Atheism.

Must faith be exactly that, the willingness and ability to believe in the face of a lack of evidence? If one could find the evidence, would then the faith be dead?

Religion is a mixed blessing.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.

Faith is a continuation of reason.

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

I think that there's a strain in journalism that believes that anyone who surrenders him- or herself to faith and to belief necessarily checks reason and rationality at the door.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn't the end and there's something more, but I can't convince the rational part of me that that makes any sense whatsoever.

The undevout astronomer must be mad.

When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.