John

“It is easy to confuse hope with faith. Yet faith is blind; faith does not have eyes that see, nor does it need them. Faith is an inner sureness and is an invaluable ally to the spiritual seeker. In no way would we discourage any from the cultivation of the faculty of faith, for it is one of the great tools of learning available to you upon the spiritual path. Yet there are situations in which a focused vision has its place and is far more effective than blind faith. That faculty is hope. Hope is the development of faith upon a specific area of intent or interest so that there is a vision which is developed which affirms all that is best in a situation, all that is requisite in an outcome.”
― Carla L. Rueckert, A Wanderer's Handbook

“No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. We have but a defective idea of what prejudice is. It might be said, that until men think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection.”
― Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man

“first settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go back to nature for information.”
― Thomas Paine, The Rights Of Man

“Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.”
― Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations