GOD QUOTES XXIII

quotations about God

I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me, "Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian beaver cheese is equally valid"-then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.

DOUGLAS ADAMS

American Atheist Magazine, winter 1998-1999


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


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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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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Gods always behave like the people who make them.

ZORA NEALE HURSTON

Tell My Horse


God does not refuse to make himself known to man. He only will not do it by the symbolism of matter. He comes to us at once by the most natural course. We are in a transient state; our bodies are accidental, and God comes to us by that which is higher and truer--the intuitions of the soul.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts

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Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions.

RéGIS DEBRAY

God: An Itinerary

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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


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


There is a very good saying that if triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.

CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU

Lettres Persannes


The man who counts on the aid of a god deserves the help he doesn't get.

GLEN COOK

Dreams of Steel


No men stand more in fear of God than those who most deny Him.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

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

WILLIAM FAULKNER

As I Lay Dying

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While the root of all the absurdities that torment the world, belief in God, remains intact, it will never fail to bring forth new offspring.

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN

God and the State

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Those who marry God can become domesticated too--it’s just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word “Love” means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and “Ave Maria” like “dearest” is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world’s marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves--it was God’s taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

GRAHAM GREENE

A Burnt-Out Case


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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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

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Isn't it time now for us to declare that the emperor is wearing no clothes? When are we going to admit that we believe in a God of extraordinary contradictions, who we say loves and who we say kills, who we say creates and who we say destroys, who we say accepts and who we say rejects, who we say rewards and who we say punishes, who we say brings us good and who we say visits evil upon us, who we say is the All in All and who we say is separate from everything, who we say is Everywhere Present and who we say is not in us and that we are not?

NEALE DONALD WALSCH

Tomorrow's God


I do not believe in God, but I am afraid of Him.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

Love in the Time of Cholera


He that trusts in the Lord with all his heart, does not indeed expect, that God will do that for him which he has never promised; far less that he will be favorable unto him, in what is contrary to his revealed will. But, first, he sees that his matters are good and right; and then he commits the keeping of his soul unto the faithful creator; who is a buckler to them alone that walked uprightly. If he is called of God to any difficult duty, for which he finds himself unequal, he persuades himself that God will command his strength, and work in him both to will and to do of his good pleasure; and out of weakness he is made strong.

WILLIAM MCEWEN

"On Trusting God", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity