GOD QUOTES XXIII

quotations about God

There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

ISAAC ASIMOV

"The Threat of Creationism", New York Times Magazine, Jun. 14, 1981

Tags: Isaac Asimov


But if God was in a continual vigilance, either there was something wanting to make him happy, or else his beatitude was perfectly complete; but according to neither of these can God be said to be blessed; not according to the first, for if there be any deficiency there is no perfect bliss; not according to the second, for, if there be nothing wanting to the felicity of God, it must be a needless enterprise for him to busy himself in human affairs. And how can it be supposed that God administers by his own providence human concerns, when to vain and trifling persons prosperous things happen, to great and high adverse?

PLUTARCH

"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies

Tags: Plutarch


Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other Gods conflict with the assumptions of science.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

"Does God exist?", Salon, October 2, 2011


God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.

GRAHAM GREENE

The Power and the Glory


God is the explanation of all things.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


It wasn't that she had anything against the faith of the New Testament; left alone, it would be a tender and compassionate religion.... No, what Adelia objected to was the Church's interpretation of God as a petty, stupid, moneygrubbing, retrograde, antediluvian tyrant who, having created a stupendously varied world, had forbidden any inquiry into its complexity, leaving His people flailing in ignorance.

ARIANA FRANKLIN

Mistress of the Art of Death

Tags: Ariana Franklin


My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women


The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.

EMMA GOLDMAN

"The Philosophy of Atheism," Mother Jones, Feb. 1916


What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

STEPHEN HAWKING

Der Spiegel, Oct. 17, 1988


God conducts all his campaigns upon analogous principles. The emancipation of mankind is always wrought out by a forlorn hope. God is not on the side of the strong battalions. In moral conflicts, at least, numbers never count. Only the few have faith in God and courage in his cause; and faith and courage alone gain the battle.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths

Tags: Lyman Abbott


God is a witness that cannot be sworn.

SAMUEL BECKETT

Watt

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Man ... has an inborn religious sentiment that whispers of a God to his inmost soul, as a shell taken from the deep yet echoes forever the ocean's roar.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

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No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible.

STEVE ALLEN

More Steve Allen on the Bible


It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook A", Aphorisms


Nothing is trivial to God which is of consequence to us. He is not so absorbed with the affairs of state that he can give no time or thought to the minor concerns of his children's life.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Old Testament Shadows of New Testament Truths

Tags: Lyman Abbott


The universe shows us the life of God, or rather it is in itself the life of God. We behold in it his permanent action, the scene upon which his power is exercised, and in which all his attributes are reflected. God is not out of the universe any more than the universe is out of God. God is the principle, the universe is the consequence, but a necessary consequence, without which the principle would be inert, unfruitful, impossible to conceive.

HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE

God: Conferences Delivered at Notre Dame in Paris

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Whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

THOMAS AQUINAS

Summa Theologica


God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


If there is a God what the hell is He for?

WILLIAM FAULKNER

As I Lay Dying

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What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.

SRI AUROBINDO

Thoughts and Glimpses

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