quotations about God
God's image is in every man, high or low--a road puddle holds the moon as well as the sea.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
The eternal Being is forever if he is at all.
BLAISE PASCAL
Thoughts
Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
I don't believe in God, but I miss him.
JULIAN BARNES
Conversations with Julian Barnes
A bad God is worse than no God at all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
God is the place of spirits, as spaces are the places of bodies.
JOHN LOCKE
"An Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing All Things in God", Philosophical Works
Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness!
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"Does God exist?", Salon, October 2, 2011
I now conceive of God as in his universe. I conceive of creation as a growth. I conceive of him as making the universe somewhat as our spirit makes our body, shaping and changing and developing it by processes from within. The figures from the finite to the infinite are imperfect and misleading, but this is the figure which best represents to me my own thought of God's relation to the universe: Not that of an engineer who said one morning, " Go to, I will make a world," and in six days, or six thousand years, or six million thousand years, made one by forming it from without, as a potter forms the clay with skilful hand; but that of a Spirit who has been forever manifesting himself in the works of creation and beneficence in all the universe, one little work of whose wisdom and beneficence we are and we see. He who would see God must use the faculty with which God is seen; and if he would do this, he must let men who are rich in the faculty which perceives the invisible, -- which looks not at the things which are seen and are temporal, but at the things which are not seen and are eternal, -- guide, teach, inspire him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
It is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the proper closest statement of it that can be made in English is that God cannot avoid noting the sparrow because the Sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God's thoughts.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
Nature only shows us the tail of the lion. I am convinced, however, that the lion is attached to it, even though he cannot reveal himself directly because of his enormous size.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
Ignorance of nature's ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life. There were gods of love and war; of the sun, earth, and sky; of the oceans and rivers; of rain and thunderstorms; even of earthquakes and volcanoes. When the gods were pleased, mankind was treated to good weather, peace, and freedom from natural disaster and disease. When they were displeased, there came draught, war, pestilence, and epidemics. Since the connection of cause and effect in nature was invisible to their eyes, these gods appeared inscrutable, and people at their mercy.
STEPHEN HAWKING & LEONARD MLODINOW
The Grand Design
I have too much respect for the idea of God to hold Him responsible for such an absurd world.
GEORGES DUHAMEL
The Pasquier Chronicles
God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring--it is his will that we should love.
VICTOR HUGO
Toilers of the Sea
God appears as a gentle rustling, not as a package of fire, floods, and earthquakes.
ERNST BLOCH
Traces
O thou mighty mind! whose powerful word
Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were!
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"
To know the face of God is to know madness.
LEOBEN CONOY
"Flesh and Bone", Battlestar Galactica
God's universe is not like the American legal system. You do something, you pay for it.
THE DEVIL
Brimstone
It should not be so hard to believe in God, for man himself is scarcely less wonderful.
FRANK CRANE
"The Part of Me That Doubts", Four Minute Essays