"The faith that stands on authority is not faith."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph's got a point. If you've got to point to something to justify your beliefs, you have none.  No beliefs, that is, and also no faith.  Faith stands alone.

"Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light."-- Helen Keller9

Helen Keller is the master of strength in the face of a shattered world.  Look at what she did despite her disadvantages! She had such faith in herself that she moved quite literally from being trapped in the dark to emerging into the light of inter-communication.
She discovered a powerful way of interacting with the world, and that's all about faith.  She knew, she had faith, that despite her blindness and deafness there was a world out there worth exploring.
That's true for us all.

"To me faith means not worrying."-- John Dewey

I love this quote.
If that's all that faith does for you, it's enough in my opinion.
Sure, it smacks of Pollyanna, but what's wrong with that?
"Don't Worry, Be Happy" is more than just a song or the words of Meher Baba.  It's genuine a spiritual principle.  Adhered to, it makes life a rich, full experience instead of the endurance contest that most "realists" believe it is.

"Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into."-- Mahatma Gandhi

We have faith when we're children in that we have a connection to the magic of life.  Often with maturity comes disillusionment and we grow out of faith.
As adults, we know that fairies and Santa Claus aren't real, but we also know in our bones that there's something out there that beckons us, a feeling that life is richer than we know.
The emptiness of adulthood when compared to our childhood is a great motivator, and we spend a lot of time trying to fill that hole with bad habits and religion.
Reconnecting to the great mystery of the world is, as Gandhi implies, an evolutionary process.  We can't really "get" it by joining a church or dropping acid, but we can slowly, slowly feel our back to the wonder of faith by tapping into the magnificence of who we truly are.

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."-- Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine recognized the power of our minds to bring to us what we expect.
We prove our worldview to ourselves over and over again, every day. It starts when we wake up in the morning.  If we feel great, we expect a great day, and usually have a great day.
When we wake up feeling crummy, well, the crumminess continues. It takes a leap of faith to decide that, despite the strength of our negative emotions, changing how we feel can change the tenure of our day.
Take the leap and see what happens.
It's up to us to change the world we see, and we can do that by simply changing our minds.

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."-- Friedrich Nietzsche

This is one of those glib quotes that so often passes as wisdom when you hear it from someone you respect, but only if you're at a dinner party and have had one or two too many glasses of wine.
In the cold sober morning and coming from Friedrich, here, it's a real surprise.
What is the logic from which this gem springs? What does "Faith" have to do with lunatic asylums?  Does Friedrich assume that if we "really believed" or if religious faith actually "worked" that lunatic asylums wouldn't exist?
The strength of this quote probably lies in his definition of "faith", but even if we knew the context this little quote is still a weak and paltry verbal snack tossed off because it sounds good and, like party food, it's loaded with flavor but has very little meat.

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. "--Martin Luther King Jr.

The month of December seems the perfect time to look into this thing called "Faith".  Is it blind, does it help us, does it hinder, does it bind us to the past or launch us into the future?  These are the questions that I hope will be answered by this inquiry.
MLK gets us off to a good start as he very simply describes what faith does: it keeps us going even if we're not sure where we're heading.