A Quote by Jonathan Raban

The mythical America?that marvellous, heroic, sentimental landwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude facts at your feet.
I have great hope and faith, but it's a humanistic faith based in facts; you have to believe that facts exist. We can all arrive at the same facts if we engage in the process of experimentation, observation, and verification, which can solve more of the world's major problems than a debate over whether God does or doesn't exist.
If you want to give birth to your true self, you are going to have to dig deep down into that body of yours and let your soul howl. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that if you turn off your head, your feet will take you where you need to go.
Nobody gets argued all the way into becoming a believer on the sheer basis of logic and reason. That requires a leap of faith.
As Einstein queried, 'Why is it that I get my best ideas in the morning while I'm shaving?' Shaving is like meditation with a sharp object. When the mind is empty and receptive, big ideas flow through every cell of our body. When we're thinking too hard, we tense up and nothing can flow through us; our energy gets stuck in our heads. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and trust that if you turn off your head, your feet will take you where you need to go.
Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.
To believe in Jesus, is to believe that the historic person who lived on this earth more than 2000 years ago was the image of the invisible God. That's a huge leap of faith, but it is my leap of faith, it's the act of faith of the Christian community.
As you reach for understanding, you find that your ladder of facts isn’t long enough, and you try to extend it by adding a rung of faith. Eventually you see that the task is hopeless, and you put away your ladder of facts and go get a ladder of faith.
There are many talented people who haven't fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.
The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpationsall of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
But why,... if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own? Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality.
The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions.
Seek to make your work a prayer, your believing an act, your living an art. It is then that the object of your faith will be made visible to you. It is then that you shall 'kiss the lips of your desire.'
One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap is the most difficult to make - to part with one's faith, one's love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.
When you fall, leap to your feet and try again.
A natural faith is sufficient for trusting a human object; but a supernatural faith is required to trust savingly in a Divine object.
I have faith in the future of this promised land of America and in its institutions of representative government, but more than that, I have faith in you, the youth of America, to build even more securely on the foundations laid by the faith and devotion of your pioneer fathers.
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