GOD QUOTES VI
quotations about God
The existence of the world without God seems to me less absurd than the presence of a God, existing in all his perfection, creating an imperfect man in order to make him run the risk of Hell.
ARMAND SALACROU
attributed, Certitudes et Incertitudes
I've come to understand that the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with that emptiness where God would be if God were available, but God isn't.
ANNE CARSON
The Paris Review, fall 2004
For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the bulk, so are we soul and body clad and enclosed in the goodness of God: yea, and more homelie, for all they vanish and waste away, the goodness of God is ever whole and more near to us without any comparison.
JULIAN OF NORWICH
Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love
God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but also morally speaking, and ... with respect to ourselves, we can say that the more enlightened and informed we are about God's works, the more we will be disposed to find them excellent and in complete conformity with what we might have desired.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Discourse on Metaphysics
God is to be believed in so far as he speaks of his gun.
ANNE CARSON
Decreation
It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: Surely (saith he) I had rather a great deal, men should say, there was no such man at all, as Plutarch, than that they should say, that there was one Plutarch, that would eat his children as soon as they were born; as the poets speak of Saturn. And as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Superstition", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
As civilisation advances, the deities lessen in number, the divine powers become concentrated more and more in one Being, and God rules over the whole earth.
ANNIE BESANT
The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant
Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is _______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means "submission". The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done.
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Intelligence Agents
Don't you know there ain't no devil? There's only God when He's drunk.
TOM WAITS
"Heartattack and Vine"
The true God is not a form idealized; he/she/it is real and therefore, by definition, imperfect; only an abstraction can be free of flaws. And since God is imperfect, there will be suffering.... There is no perfect God. And your suffering requires no more explanation than that unavoidable imperfection.
ROBERT J. SAWYER
Calculating God
Each man creates god in his own image.
MORDECAI RICHLER
Son of a Smaller Hero
A bad God is worse than no God at all.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
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
Soul of the universe, Sire, God, Creator,
Lord, I believe in Thee, 'neath all these names:
And without having need to hear thy word,
In the sky's brow my glorious creed I trace.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
When we say that God is infinite, we do not mean that He is of immeasurable size and duration, but that He is beyond all space and time. He is neither in space nor in time; for this reason He is eternal and infinite, and therefore He is also incomprehensible.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
All nations believe the gods to be governed by a king; for men, who have made the gods after their own image, are ever hasty in ascribing to these celestial beings, human manners and human institutions.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
My God is love and sweetly suffers all.
SRI AUROBINDO
Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol
God appears as a gentle rustling, not as a package of fire, floods, and earthquakes.
ERNST BLOCH
Traces
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
meditation on the will of God, Sep. 1862