Wednesday, May 15, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Northrop Frye

« All quotes from this author
 

Belief has nothing to do with knowledge, & credo ut intelligam [I believe in order that I might understand] is horseshit.

 
Northrop Frye

» Northrop Frye - all quotes »



Tags: Northrop Frye Quotes, Authors starting by F


Similar quotes

 

A Berber, born in 354 at Thagaste (now Souk-Ahras) in Africa... The exceptional brilliance of his works (The City of God, The Confessions), his contradictory nature, his desire to bring together faith and intelligence, classical and Christian civilization, the old wine and the new — these deliberate efforts made him in some ways a rationalist. For him, faith came first: but he nevertheless declared 'Credo ut intelligam' — 'I believe in order to understand.' He also said 'Si fallor, sum' — 'If I am mistaken, I exist' — and 'Si dubitat, vivit' — 'If he doubts, he is alive'... Posterity undoubtedly concentrated its attention on St Augustine as a theologian, and on what he wrote about predestination. But Augustinianism gave Western Christianity some of its colour and its ability to adapt and debate — if only by insisting on the vital need to embrace the faith in full awareness, after deep personnal reflection, and with the will to act accordingly.

 
Augustine of Hippo
 

Well, granted that it was only a dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and beautiful people has remained with me for ever, and I feel as though their love is still flowing out to me from over there. I have seen them myself, have known them and been convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh, I understood at once even at the time that in many things I could not understand them at all ... But I soon realised that their knowledge was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others how to love, while they without science knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand their knowledge.

 
Fyodor Dostoevsky
 

My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, of Béranger! My credo is the credo of Rousseau! I adhere to the immortal principles of '89!

 
Pierre-Jean de Beranger
 

To understand at all what life means, one must begin with Christian belief. And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man unless he loves.

 
William Mountford
 

It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions.

 
Isaac Newton
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact