"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. … A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment, being essentially an objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect his subjective infirmity. His faith takes on the virulence of a chronic infection. What he usually says, in substance, is this: "Let us trust in God, who has always fooled us in the past." "
~H. L. Mencken (1880–1956), U.S. journalist. Prejudices, ch. 14, "The Believer" (Third Series, 1922).
