For other uses, see God (disambiguation).

In monotheism, God is conceived of as the Supreme Being and principal object of faith.

A [ edit ]

Quotations listed alphabetically by author or work.

He said: Do you then understand what you worship -- You and your forefathers? -- Surely they are abhorrence to me, except the Lord of the worlds,

Who created me, then He guides me the way,

And Who provides me sustenance to eat and to drink,

And when I am sick, it is He who heals me,

And Who will cause me to die, and will resurrect me,

And Who, I hope, will forgive me my mistakes on the Day of Judgment. Abraham, Quran 26:75-82

And Who, I hope, will forgive me my mistakes on the Day of Judgment.

When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness. John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson (17 January 1820)



Nearer, my God, to Thee—

Nearer to Thee—

E'en though it be a cross

That raiseth me;

Still all my song shall be

Nearer, my God, to Thee,

Nearer to Thee! Sarah Flower Adams, Nearer, my God, to Thee! (c. 1841); an article in Notes and Queries states that the words were written by her sister, Mrs. Byrdes Flower Adams, and the music only by Sarah Flower Adams.

Nearer to Thee— E'en though it be a cross That raiseth me; Still all my song shall be Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee!

Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit. And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. Variant translation: We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness. Alcuin Works, Epistle 127 (to Charlemagne, AD 800)



Never place a period where God has placed a comma. Gracie Allen, in her last letter to George Burns, as quoted in Two Minutes for God : Quick Fixes for the Spirit (2007) by Peter B. Panagore, p. 73; this was later used in a slogan for the United Church of Christ: Never place a period where God has placed a comma. God Is Still Speaking.



Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. Woody Allen, Getting Even (1971)



If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. Woody Allen, Without Feathers (1975)



The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse. Woody Allen, Love and Death (1975); also quoted in What Do Jews Believe? : The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism (2007) by Edward Kessler, p. 66



To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition. Woody Allen, Stardust Memories (1980)



How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? Woody Allen, as quoted in Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50



Love even the knot-grass. God created it. Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One: The Call , 237, (1924)



Shepherds have received the revelations, While emperors have searched for them. Dogmatic scholars have resisted them. Leaders have been fearful of them. The Voice of God overshadows all when there is spiritual readiness. Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One: The Call , 367, (1924)



The canon, “By thy God,” is the higher, and this canon is the basis of the New World. Formerly one said: “And my spirit rejoiceth in God, my Savior.” Now you will say: “And my spirit rejoiceth in God, thy Savior.” Solemnly do I say that therein is salvation. “Long live thy God!” So you will say to everyone; and, exchanging Gods, you will walk to the One.

There where one might otherwise sink one can tread softly, if without negation. There where one could suffocate one can pass, by pronouncing “Thy God.” There where matter is revered one can pass only by elevating the earthly matter into the Cosmos. Essentially, one should not have any attachment to Earth... Thus, find the God of each one and exalt Him. Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden II, Illumination , 211, (1924)

There where one might otherwise sink one can tread softly, if without negation. There where one could suffocate one can pass, by pronouncing “Thy God.” There where matter is revered one can pass only by elevating the earthly matter into the Cosmos. Essentially, one should not have any attachment to Earth... Thus, find the God of each one and exalt Him.

What is meant by "mad in God"? Why were the prophets of antiquity called madmen? Precisely because of the fire of straight-knowledge, which isolated them from all else, a valuable quality that severed them from the ordinary, everyday ways of thinking. Agni Yoga, Agni Yoga , 281, (1929)



Even in the most ancient times people understood the significance of the heart. They regarded the heart as the Dwelling of God. Agni Yoga, Heart 73, (1932)



I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan B. Anthony, in an address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896)



God is the most noble of beings. Now it is impossible for a body to be the most noble of beings; for a body must be either animate or inanimate; and an animate body is manifestly nobler than any inanimate body. But an animate body is not animate precisely as body; otherwise all bodies would be animate. Therefore its animation depends upon some other thing, as our body depends for its animation on the soul. Hence that by which a body becomes animated must be nobler than the body. Therefore it is impossible that God should be a body. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica , Part 1, Question 3



Ordina l'uomo, e dio dispone. Man proposes, and God disposes. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516), Chapter XLVI. 35



If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir (1994)

I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

God, in order to speak to Abraham, must come from somewhere, must enter the earthly realm from some unknown heights or depths. Whence does he come, whence does he call to Abraham? We are not told. He does not come, like Zeus or Poseidon, from the Aethiopians, where he has been enjoying a sacrificial feast. Nor are we told anything of his reasons for tempting Abraham so terribly. He has not, like Zeus, discussed them in set speeches with other gods gathered in council; nor have the deliberations in his own heart been presented to us; unexpected and mysterious, he enters the scene from some unknown height or depth and calls: Abraham! It will at once be said that this is to be explained by the particular concept of God which the Jews held and which was wholly different from that of the Greeks. True enough—but this constitutes no objection. For how is the Jewish concept of God to be explained? Even their earlier God of the desert was not fixed in form and content, and was alone; his lack of form, his lack of local habitation, his singleness, was in the end not only maintained but developed even further in competition with the comparatively far more manifest gods of the surrounding Near Eastern world. The concept of God held by the Jews is less a cause than a symptom of their manner of comprehending and representing things. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature , Willard R. Trask, trans. (Princeton: 1953), chapter 1



If you comprehend, it is not God. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 52, 16



Deus scitur melius nesciendo. God is best known in not knowing him. Augustine of Hippo, De Ordine , II, 16



I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. ~ Susan B. Anthony

For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent. Augustine of Hippo in: St. Augustine's City of God and Christian Doctrine: Chapter 10.—Whether Our Wills are Ruled by Necessity , ccel.org



A God who cannot smile could not have created this humorous universe. Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms



God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints. Avicenna, as quoted in 366 Readings From Islam (2000), edited by Robert Van der Weyer

The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.

B [ edit ]

All of God but also to speak to him. ~ names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speakGod but also to speakhim. ~ Martin Buber

At certain great moments down the ages, God drew nearer to His people and humanity at the same time made great, though oft unconscious efforts to draw near to God. From one angle, it might be regarded as God transcendent recognizing God immanent, and God in man reaching out to God in the Whole and greater than the Whole. On the part of God, working through the Head of the spiritual Hierarchy and its Membership, this effort was intentional, conscious and deliberate; on the part of man, it has been in the past largely unconscious, forced upon humanity by the tragedy of circumstances, by desperate need and by the driving urge of the immanent Christ consciousness. Alice Bailey, Problems Of Humanity , Chapter V The Problem of the Churches - Part 2, (1944)



The Eastern faiths have ever emphasised God Immanent, deep within the human heart, "nearer than hands and feet", the Self, the One, the Atma, smaller than the small, yet all-comprehensive. The Western faiths have presented God Transcendent, Outside His universe, an Onlooker. God transcendent, first of all, conditioned men's concept of Deity, for the action of this transcendent God appeared in the process of nature; later, in the Jewish dispensation, God appeared as the tribal Jehovah, as the soul (the rather unpleasant soul) of a nation. Next, God was seen as a perfected man, and the divine God-man walked the Earth in the Person of the Christ. Alice Bailey The Reappearance of the Christ p. 144, (1947)



Today we have a rapidly growing emphasis upon God immanent in every human being, and in every created form. Today, we should have the churches presenting a synthesis of these two ideas, which have been summed up for us in the statement of Shri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: "Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain." God, greater than the created whole, yet God present also in the part; God Transcendent guarantees the Plan of our world, and is the Purpose conditioning all lives from the minutest atom, up through all the kingdoms of nature, to man. Alice Bailey in The Reappearance of the Christ p. 145, (1947)



True religion is again emerging in the hearts of men in every land; this recognition of a divine hope and background may possibly take people back into the church and into the world faiths, but it will most certainly take them back to God. Alice Bailey The Reappearance of the Christ, Chapter Three (1947)



Religion is the name, surely, which we give to the invocative appeal of humanity which leads to the evocative response of the Spirit of God. This Spirit works in every human heart and in all groups. Alice Bailey The Reappearance of the Christ, Chapter Three (1947)



Slowly, there is dawning upon the awakening consciousness of humanity the great paralleling truth of God Immanent – divinely "pervading" all forms, conditioning from within all kingdoms in nature, expressing innate divinity through human beings. . . . There is a growing and developing belief that Christ is in us, as He was in the Master Jesus, and this belief will alter world affairs and mankind's entire attitude to life. (13 – 592). Alice Bailey in The Externalization of the Hierarchy p. 592, (1957)



God Transcendent, greater, vaster and more inclusive than His created world, is universally recognised and has been generally emphasised; all faiths can say with Shri Krishna (speaking as God, the Creator) that "having pervaded the whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain." This God Transcendent has dominated the religious thinking of millions of simple and spiritually-minded people down the centuries which have elapsed since humanity began to press forward towards divinity. Alice Bailey The Externalisation Of The Hierarchy The Return of the Christ - Part 1, (1957)



A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. Mikhail Bakunin in "On God and the State"



The glory of God is not contingent on man's good will, but all existence subserves his purposes. The system of the universe is as a celestial poem, whose beauty is from all eternity, and must not be marred by human interpolations. Things proceed as they were ordered, in their nice, and well-adjusted, and perfect harmony; so that as the hand of the skilful artist gathers music from the harp-strings, history calls it forth from the well-tuned chords of time. Not that this harmony can be heard during the tumult of action. Philosophy comes after events, and gives the reason of them, and describes the nature of their results. The great mind of collective man may, one day, so improve in self-consciousness as to interpret the present and foretell the future; but as yet, the end of what is now happening, though we ourselves partake in it, seems to fall out by chance. All is nevertheless one whole; individuals, families, peoples, the race, march in accord with the Divine will; and when any part of the destiny of humanity is fulfilled, we see the ways of Providence vindicated. The antagonisms of imperfect matter and the perfect idea, of liberty and necessary law, become reconciled. What seemed irrational confusion, appears as the web woven by light, liberty and love. But this is not perceived till a great act in the drama of life is finished. The prayer of the patriarch, when he desired to behold the Divinity face to face, was denied; but he was able to catch a glimpse of Jehovah, after He had passed by; and so it fares with our search for Him in the wrestlings of the world. It is when the hour of conflict is over, that history comes to a right understanding of the strife, and is ready to exclaim: "Lo! God is here, and we knew it not." George Bancroft Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855), p. 491

The system of the universe is as a celestial poem, whose beauty is from all eternity, and must not be marred by human interpolations. Not that this harmony can be heard during the tumult of action. Philosophy comes after events, and gives the reason of them, and describes the nature of their results. The great mind of collective man may, one day, so improve in self-consciousness as to interpret the present and foretell the future; but as yet, the end of what is now happening, though we ourselves partake in it, seems to fall out by chance. But this is not perceived till a great act in the drama of life is finished. The prayer of the patriarch, when he desired to behold the Divinity face to face, was denied; but he was able to catch a glimpse of Jehovah, after He had passed by; and so it fares with our search for Him in the wrestlings of the world.

When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God. Basil of Caesarea, Letter to Gregory, Saint Basil: The Letters , R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 15



We thus become temples of God whenever earthly cares cease to interrupt the continuity of our memory of Him. Basil of Caesarea, Letter to Gregory, Saint Basil: The Letters , R. Deferrari, trans. (1926), vol. 1, p. 19



If I said decisively, “I have seen God,” that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown—wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it—there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated. Georges Bataille, Inner Experience (1954), L. Boldt, trans. (1988), p. 4



If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot. Samuel Beckett, on the title of one of his most famous plays, Waiting for Godot , as quoted in The Essential Samuel Beckett : An Illustrated Biography , by Enoch Brater (revised edition, 2003), p. 75



How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? . . . We must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God: Rouse yourself! Do not forget mankind, your creature! Pope Benedict XVI, who visited the former concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland, on (28 May 2006), as quoted in “Why, Lord, Did You Remain Silent?” , in The Watchtower magazine (15 May 2007)



The true Mystic, realising God, has no need of any Scriptures, for he has touched the source whence all Scriptures flow. Annie Besant in The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant



Mysticism is the realisation of God, of the Universal Self. It is attained either as a realisation of God outside the Mystic, or within himself. In the first case, it is usually reached from within a religion, by exceptionally intense love and devotion, accompanied by purity of life, for only "the pure in heart shall see God". Annie Besant in Annie Besant Quotes ISBN-13: 978-1535078498 (2016)



It is patent to every student of the closing forty years of the last century, that crowds of thoughtful and moral people have slipped away from the churches, because the teachings they received there outraged their intelligence and shocked their moral sense. It is idle to pretend that the widespread agnosticism of this period had its root either in lack of morality or in deliberate crookedness of mind. Everyone who carefully studies the phenomena presented will admit that men of strong intellect have been driven out of Christianity by the crudity of the religious ideas set before them, the contradictions in the authoritative teachings, the views as to God, man, and the universe that no trained intelligence could possibly admit. Nor can it be said that any kind of moral degradation lay at the root of the revolt against the dogmas of the Church. The rebels were not too bad for their religion; on the contrary, it was the religion that was too bad for them. The rebellion against popular Christianity was due to the awakening and the growth of conscience; it was the conscience that revolted, as well as the intelligence, against teachings dishonouring to God and man alike, that represented God as a tyrant, and man as essentially evil, gaining salvation by slavish submission. Annie Besant in Esoteric Christianity (The Lesser Mysteries), Theosophical publishing, (1914)



Another precept of Jesus which remains as "a hard saying" to his followers is: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect". [S. Matt., v, 48. ] The ordinary Christian knows that he cannot possibly obey this command; full of ordinary human frailties and weaknesses, how can he become perfect as God is perfect? Seeing the impossibility of the achievement set before him, he quietly puts it aside, and thinks no more about it. But seen as the crowning effort of many lives of steady improvement, as the triumph of the God within us over the lower nature, it comes within calculable distance, and we recall the words of Porphyry, how the man who achieves "the paradigmatic virtues is the Father of the Gods", and that in the Mysteries these virtues were acquired. Annie Besant in Esoteric Christianity (The Lesser Mysteries), Theosophical publishing, (1914)



For so reverent is God to that Spirit which is Himself in man, that He will not even pour into the human soul a flood of strength and life unless that soul is willing to receive it. There must be an opening from below as well as an outpouring from above, the receptiveness of the lower nature as well as the willingness of the higher to give. That is the link between the Christ and the man; that is what the churches have called the outpouring of "divine grace"; that is what is meant by the "faith" necessary to make the grace effective. As Giordano Bruno once put it — the human soul has windows, and can shut those windows close. The sun outside is shining, the light is unchanging; let the windows be opened and the sunlight must stream in. The light of God is beating against the windows of every human soul, and when the windows are thrown open, the soul becomes illuminated. There is no change in God, but there is a change in man; and man's will may not be forced, else were the divine Life in him blocked in its due evolution. Thus in every Christ that rises, all humanity is lifted a step higher, and by His wisdom the ignorance of the whole world is lessened. Annie Besant in Esoteric Christianity (The Lesser Mysteries), Theosophical publishing, (1914)



Zeus , n . The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names. Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Word Book (1906), later retitled The Devil's Dictionary

, . The chief of Grecian gods, adored by the Romans as Jupiter and by the modern Americans as God, Gold, Mob and Dog. Some explorers who have touched upon the shores of America, and one who professes to have penetrated a considerable distance to the interior, have thought that these four names stand for as many distinct deities, but in his monumental work on Surviving Faiths, Frumpp insists that the natives are monotheists, each having no other god than himself, whom he worships under many sacred names.

We reject the idea of a personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of man, and not of man at his best, either. The God of theology, we say—and prove it—is a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility... Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain; it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible atom and divisible molecule; for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (1889)



If we have to believe in a divine principle at all, it must be in one which is as absolute harmony, logic, and justice, as it is absolute love, wisdom, and impartiality; and a God who would create every soul for the space of one brief span of life, regardless of the fact whether it has to animate the body of a wealthy, happy man, or that of a poor suffering wretch, hapless from birth to death though he has done nothing to deserve his cruel fate—would be rather a senseless fiend than a God. H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (1889)



It is not the One unknown ever-present God in Nature, or Nature in abscondito, that is rejected, but the “God” of human dogma, and his humanized “Word.” Man, in his infinite conceit and inherent pride and vanity, shaped it himself with his sacrilegious hand out of the material he found in his own small brain-fabric, and forced it upon his fellows as a direct revelation from the one unrevealed Space. H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine , Vol. 1 (1888)



Esoteric Philosophy...denies Deity no more than it does the sun. Esoteric Philosophy has never rejected God in Nature, nor Deity as the absolute and abstract Ens. It only refuses to accept any of the gods of the so-called monotheistic religions, gods created by man in his own image and likeness, a blasphemous and sorry caricature of the Ever-Unknowable. H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine , Vol. 1 (1888)



How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (1967), p. 311



To everyone God is the kind of God he believes in. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge (1937), The Cost of Discipleship (1959), p. 185



Only what is fated to die is capable of living. Only what dies lives. Why do you think Christ was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god. Giannina Braschi in "Empire of Dreams"

Why do you think Christ was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god.

The gods envy me because they cannot die. Giannina Braschi in "Empire of Dreams"



Goddes love

is unescapable as nature's environment,

which if a man ignore or think to thrust it off

he is the ill-natured fool that runneth on to death. Robert Bridges, The Testament of Beauty (1929), Book IV, line 1419

is unescapable as nature's environment, which if a man ignore or think to thrust it off he is the ill-natured fool that runneth on to death.

That we devote ourselves to God is seen

In living just as though no God there were. Robert Browning, Paracelsus (1835), Part I

In living just as though no God there were.

God is the perfect poet,

Who in his person acts his own creations. Robert Browning, Paracelsus (1835), Part II



God's in His Heaven —

All's right with the world! Robert Browning, Pippa Passes (1841), Part I



All service is the same with God,

With God, whose puppets, best and worst,

Are we: there is no last nor first. Robert Browning, Pippa Passes (1841), Part IV

With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first.

All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him. Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923)

God but also to speak him.

Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others. Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923)



When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which—of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man (1965), p. 15



According to mythological thinking, God has his domicile in heaven. What is the meaning of this statement? The meaning is quite clear. In a crude manner it expresses the idea that God is beyond the world, that He is transcendent. The thinking which is not yet capable of forming the abstract idea of transcendence expresses its intention in the category of space. Rudolf Bultmann, “Jesus Christ and Mythology,” Interpreting Faith for the Modern Era, p. 294



God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion. Samuel Butler "Rebelliousness" in Note-Books (1912)



There is no god but God! — to prayer — lo!

God is great! Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , Canto II (1812), Stanza 59, this is a translation of standard Islamic exclamations



“It’s not my job to be God’s lawyer,...I’m his salesman. I do believe he’s the greatest thing that ever existed, and I encourage people to get to know him without trying to explain what he’s doing or why.” Rabbi Chaim Bruk in Is the coronavirus an act of God? Faith leaders debate tough questions amid pandemic, USA Today April 2, 2020.



C [ edit ]

Our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us ... that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves. For what man is not disposed to rest in himself? Who, in fact, does not thus rest, so long as he is unknown to himself; that is, so long as he is contented with his own endowments, and unconscious or unmindful of his misery? Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , Book 1, Chapter 1



Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , Book 1 Chapter 1, p. 44



Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words. Jimmy Carter, Living Faith (2001), p. 222



Although every believing Christian understands that God guides our steps, fewer and fewer emphasize the point. A God working actively in the world makes us uneasy. We tend to like our God distant and a bit malleable, ready to bend to every new human idea. A God with a will of his own is too scary, and, besides, he might get in the way of our satisfaction of immediate desire. Stephen L. Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park , Ch. 25, A Modest Request , I (2002)



Promises made to others in God's name engage the divine honor, fidelity, truthfulness, and authority. They must be respected in justice. To be unfaithful to them is to misuse God's name and in some way to make God out to be a liar. (1 John 1:10) Catechism of the Catholic Church 2147



True religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being. Its noblest influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity. William Ellery Channing, “Likeness to God” (1828)



Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men’s aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God. William Ellery Channing, “Likeness to God” (1828)



If [people] wish to love God, they [must] be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion. Ted Chiang "Hell Is the Absence of God", Stories of Your Life and Others (e-book ed.). Picador. p. 164. ISBN 978-1-4472-8198-6.



God can only set in motion:

He cannot control the things he has made. T'ao Ch'ien, Substance, Shadow, and Spirit , "Spirit expounds" (transl. by Arthur Waley)

He cannot control the things he has made.

First of all you – you fucking fake Christians – don’t fucking question my Christianity. I grew up in the church. My grandfather was a minister, who is with God now and talks to me in my dreams from God’s corner office. I am a former Sunday school teacher. I taught the Bible to children and showed them how to love God and invite him into their hearts. I believe in God – but I don’t fear him. God is my best friend. God is my ally. God is my boyfriend. God is my best fag. I am God’s fag hag cuz didn’t you know, God is a big fag. Serious bottom too. Butch in the streets, femme in the sheets. That is my God. God is my biggest fan. God gets me, dude.

God wants us all to just get along. He doesn’t give a shit about the profanity. The bitch fucking invented profanity. He thinks it is hilarious. He just wants you to talk to him, and he doesn’t care what you have to say. He just wants to keep the conversation going. Like Jay-Z, he just wants to love you. He just wants you to be able to make your own decisions. God is all about you and what you need. God is happy that you are gay. God made you fucking gay cuz he thinks it is awesome. God understands if you need to have an abortion. That is why he created abortion, on the 8th day. God accepts. God forgives. God loves all of us, even though some of us might have a problem with each other. Margaret Cho, I'm a Christian you Fuckers

Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur .

. Cicero, De legibus, book 3

God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays. Emile Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born



In most cases we attach ourselves to God in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better. E. M. Cioran, History and Utopia (1960)



It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him. Arthur C. Clarke, clarkefoundation.org



The rash assertion that ‘God made man in His own image’ is ticking like a time bomb at the foundations of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods. Arthur C. Clarke, clarkefoundation.org



I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her. Arthur C. Clarke, as quoted in Multiple Intelligences in Practice : Enhancing Self-esteem and Learning in the Classroom (2006) by Mike Fleetham, Section 2 : Using MI



Haven’t you ever watched ants struggling with a load too big for them? How much did you care? Even if, like God, you marked the fall of every sparrow, you might simply be conducting a survey or expressing colossal boredom, like the people who delight in measuring things. Mildred Clingerman "Birds Can't Count" (Originally published at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (February, 1955) and reprinted in her collection A Cupful of Space )



Thou shalt have one God only; who

Would be at the expense of two? Arthur Hugh Clough, The Latest Decalogue (1862).

Would be at the expense of two?

The God who appears to me is the comforter of the poor and their avenger in world history. This avenger of the poor is the God I love. Hermann Cohen, The Concept of Religion in the System of Philosophy (1915), p. 81



Only the idea of God gives me the confidence that morality will become reality on earth. And because I cannot live without this confidence, I cannot live without God. Hermann Cohen, Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (1971), p. 5



Reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Francis Collins, cnn.com



God is dead not because He doesn't exist, but because we live, play, procreate, govern, and die as though He doesn't. Charles Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict (1990), p. 275



Oppressed and oppressors cannot possibly mean the same thing when they speak of God. The God of the oppressed is a God of revolution who breaks the chains of slavery. The oppressors' God is a God of slavery and must be destroyed along with the oppressors. James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), p. 61



God never meant that man should scale the Heavens

By strides of human wisdom. In his works,

Though wondrous, he commands us in his word

To seek him rather where his mercy shines. William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book III, line 217

By strides of human wisdom. In his works, Though wondrous, he commands us in his word To seek him rather where his mercy shines.

But who with filial confidence inspired,

Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye,

And smiling say, My Father made them all. William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V. The Winter Morning Walk, line 745

Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, My Father made them all.

Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste

His works. Admitted once to his embrace,

Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before:

Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart

Made pure shall relish with divine delight

Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought. William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V, line 782

Admitted once to his embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before: Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart Made pure shall relish with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.

We are really gods in incarnation. We need to recognize our threefold constitution: We are a spark of God; every religion has postulated this and has kept the idea of our divinity before humanity for thousands of years. But it can be seen more scientifically and still correctly. Speaking as an esotericist, I would say that the divine spark is so refined in vibration that it cannot manifest directly on the physical plane. It reflects itself, therefore, as the individualized human soul. The soul, in its turn, reflects itself in the human personality, with its physical, emotional, and mental bodies. Through the physical plane personality, the soul enacts its reincarnational process, until finally the individual on the physical plane, the man or woman, reflects perfectly the quality of the soul, which is the divine quality of the spark of God. Benjamin Creme in The Ageless Wisdom, An introduction to humanity's spiritual legacy,'Share International (1996) p.3-4



God, in the esoteric meaning, is the sum total of all the Laws and all the energies governed by these Laws in the manifested and unmanifested universe. So God is impersonal. Nevertheless, that transcendent God is manifest in every aspect of creation, including ourselves. We are not separate from that creation — from God. Every human being has the potential of the knowledge, the awareness, of all in creation that we can think of as meaning God.

The Masters [of Wisdom] are God-realized, which is a very specific state, in that They have brought Their consciousness, in terms of the divine spark, the Absolute, the Self, into complete at-one-ment with Themselves as men on the physical plane — the personality and the divine aspect are totally integrated...

God is everything that exists, and all space between that which exists...and around everything. All of that is God... Modern science has been able to break down cellular structures and show that at the centre of every atom is a nucleus with electrons around it, vibrating at a specific rate, and that every atom in the universe is made in the same way. There is nothing but energy in all of the manifested universe. The difference between that totally scientific view and that which an esotericist would hold is that the esotericist goes further and says, indeed, all is energy, but energy follows thought, is acted upon by thought. Thought is the agency by which creation takes place. Benjamin Creme in ' The Ageless Wisdom, An introduction to humanity's spiritual legacy, Share International (1996) p.7

The Masters [of Wisdom] are God-realized, which is a very specific state, in that They have brought Their consciousness, in terms of the divine spark, the Absolute, the Self, into complete at-one-ment with Themselves as men on the physical plane — the personality and the divine aspect are totally integrated... God is everything that exists, and all space between that which exists...and around everything. All of that is God... Modern science has been able to break down cellular structures and show that at the centre of every atom is a nucleus with electrons around it, vibrating at a specific rate, and that every atom in the universe is made in the same way. There is nothing but energy in all of the manifested universe. The difference between that totally scientific view and that which an esotericist would hold is that the esotericist goes further and says, indeed, all is energy, but energy follows thought, is acted upon by thought. Thought is the agency by which creation takes place.

D [ edit ]

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose. Speech in Toronto (1930); as quoted in "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996) by James A. Haught. Variant: I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose. As quoted in Jesus: Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either. Clarence Darrow as quoted in The New York Times (19 April 1936)



I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil. Clarence Darrow as quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)



I am an agnostic as to the question of God. I think that it is impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless it can form a mental picture of such object or thing. Since man ceased to worship openly an anthropomorphic God and talked vaguely and not intelligently about some force in the universe, higher than man, that is responsible for the existence of man and the universe, he cannot be said to believe in God. One cannot believe in a force excepting as a force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. To believe in a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind. If one is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there immediately arises in his mind an image of the camel. This image has come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who is described as a force. Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic (1929) Full text online

I think that it is impossible for the human mind to believe in an object or thing unless it can form a mental picture of such object or thing. Since man ceased to worship openly an anthropomorphic God and talked vaguely and not intelligently about some force in the universe, higher than man, that is responsible for the existence of man and the universe, he cannot be said to believe in God. One cannot believe in a force excepting as a force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. To believe in a thing, an image of the thing must be stamped on the mind. If one is asked if he believes in such an animal as a camel, there immediately arises in his mind an image of the camel. This image has come from experience or knowledge of the animal gathered in some way or other. No such image comes, or can come, with the idea of a God who is described as a force. To say that God made the universe gives us no explanation of the beginnings of things. If we are told that God made the universe, the question immediately arises: Who made God? Did he always exist, or was there some power back of that? Did he create matter out of nothing, or is his existence coextensive with matter? The problem is still there. What is the origin of it all? If, on the other hand, one says that the universe was not made by God, that it always existed, he has the same difficulty to confront. To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess. Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic (1929) Full text online

Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus. Clarence Darrow, Why I Am An Agnostic (1929) Full text online



If you see yourself as God and then you come back from this state and somebody says, “Hey, Sam, empty the garbage!” it catches you back into the model of “I'm Sam who empties the garbage.” You can't maintain these new kinds of structures. It takes a while to realize that God can empty garbage. Ram Dass, Be Here Now (1971)



A man who recognizes no God is probably placing an inordinate value on himself. Robertson Davies in Conversations



The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006), p. 31



The trouble is that God in this sophisticated, physicist's sense bears no resemblance to the God of the Bible or any other religion. If a physicist says God is another name for Planck's constant, or God is a superstring, we should take it as a picturesque metaphorical way of saying that the nature of superstrings or the value of Planck's constant is a profound mystery. It has obviously not the smallest connection with a being capable of forgiving sins, a being who might listen to prayers, who cares about whether or not the Sabbath begins at 5pm or 6pm, whether you wear a veil or have a bit of arm showing; and no connection whatever with a being capable of imposing a death penalty on His son to expiate the sins of the world before and after he was born. Richard Dawkins, from a lecture, extracted from The Nullifidian (December 1994)





Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — ~ It is solemn to remember that Vastness —Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — ~ Emily Dickinson

If man is created by an external source, then he must belong to that source and not to himself. According to Buddhism, man is responsible for everything he does. Thus Buddhists have no reason to believe that man came into existence in the human form through any external sources. They believe that man is here today because of his own action. He is neither punished nor rewarded by anyone but himself according to his own good and bad action. In the process of evolution, the human being came into existence. However, there are no Buddha-words to support the belief that the world was created by anybody. The scientific discovery of gradual development of the world-system conforms with the Buddha's Teachings. K. Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera, What Buddhists Believe (1993)



They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse. Emily Dickinson, Letter to Mrs. J. G. Holland [L551] (Spring 1878)



It is solemn to remember that Vastness —

Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it —

All things swept sole away

This — is immensity — Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson [L551] (1881)

Is but the Shadow of the Brain which casts it — All things swept sole away This — is immensity —

If there is a supreme being, he's crazy. Marlene Dietrich, as quoted in Rave magazine (November 1986)



God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. Paul Dirac, as quoted in The Cosmic Code : Quantum Physics As The Language Of Nature (1982) by Heinz R. Pagels, p. 295; also in Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac : Reminiscences about a Great Physicist (1990) edited by Behram N. Kursunoglu and Eugene Paul Wigner, p. xv



One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Paul Dirac, WOL



Clearly, the Scripture tells us that we lack the capacity to grasp God's infinite mind or the way He intervenes in our lives. How arrogant of us to think otherwise! Trying to analyze His omnipotence is like an amoeba attempting to comprehend the behavior of man. James Dobson in: Bill Bradfield On Reading the Bible: Thoughts and Reflections of Over 500 Men and Women, from St. Augustine to Oprah Winfrey , Courier Dover Publications, Jul 12, 2012.



To be simple we must desire to remain in the image of God. We must not be so complex that we make God into our image! Catherine Doherty, Unfinished Pilgrimage (Combermere, Ontario: Madonna House Publications, 1995), p. 12.



Charles Hartshorne... informed me that my theological standpoint is Socinian. ...The main tenet of the Socinian heresy is that God is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He learns and grows as the universe unfolds. ...I ...find it congenial, and consistent with scientific common sense. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. ...We are the chief inlets of God on this planet at the present stage... We may later grow with him as he grows, or we may be left behind. ...If we are left behind, it is an end. If we keep on growing, it is a beginning. Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (1988)



I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence. Freeman Dyson, in "Progress In Religion : A Talk By Freeman Dyson", his acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize, Washington National Cathedral (9 May 2000)

God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God. This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics.

I do not claim any ability to read God's mind. I am sure of only one thing. When we look at the glory of stars and galaxies in the sky and the glory of forests and flowers in the living world around us, it is evident that God loves diversity. Perhaps the universe is constructed according to a principle of maximum diversity. Freeman Dyson, in "Progress In Religion : A Talk By Freeman Dyson" (9 May 2000)

Perhaps the universe is constructed according to a principle of maximum diversity.

E [ edit ]

God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. The highest revelation is that God is in every man. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born. Meister Eckhart, as quoted in Christianity (1995) by Joe Jenkins, p. 27



Where the human being in obedience goes out from his “I” and dismisses what is his own, God must necessarily enter in precisely there; for when someone does not will anything for himself, God must will for that person in the same ay as He wills for himself. Meister Eckhart, Sermons , in J. Hackett, A Companion to Meister Eckhart



If God is as real as the shadow of the Great War on Armistice Day, need we seek further reason for making a place for God in our thoughts and lives? We shall not be concerned if the scientific explorer reports that he is perfectly satisfied that he has got to the bottom of things without having come across either. Arthur Eddington, Science and the Unseen World (1929)

in our thoughts and lives? reports that he that he has got to the bottom of things

If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts and fears which attend such a belief, and so we cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite, incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible. Mary Baker Eddy, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures



Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions Thomas Edison, ""No Immortality of the Soul" says Thomas A. Edison. In Fact, He Doesn't Believe There Is a Soul — Human Beings Only an Aggregate of Cells and the Brain Only a Wonderful Machine, Says Wizard of Electricity". New York Times. October 2, 1910



I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt. Thomas Edison, The Freethinker (1970), G.W. Foote & Company, Volume 90, p. 147



I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him. Albert Einstein, letter to Edgar Meyer (2 January 1915)



The God Spinoza revered is my God, too: I meet Him everyday in the harmonious laws which govern the universe. My religion is cosmic, and my God is too universal to concern himself with the intentions of every human being. I do not accept a religion of fear; My God will not hold me responsible for the actions that necessity imposes. My God speaks to me through laws. Albert Einstein, in an interview (1948), quoted in Einstein and the Poet : In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983) by William Hermanns, p. 59

My religion is cosmic, and my God is too universal to concern himself with the intentions of every human being. My God speaks to me through laws.

About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church. As long as I can remember, I have resented mass indoctrination. I do not believe in the fear of life, in the fear of death, in blind faith. I cannot prove to you that there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws. Albert Einstein, in an interview (1948), quoted in Einstein and the Poet : In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983) by William Hermanns, p. 132



My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment. Albert Einstein, letter to M. Berkowitz (25 October 1950)

I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of ‘humility.’ This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. . . . My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. . . . I want to know how God created this world. I want to know his thoughts, the rest are details. Albert Einstein, as quoted by Timothy Ferris, in his article “The Other Einstein”, Awake! magazine, (22 January 1992)

This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism. . . . My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. . . . I want to know how God created this world. I want to know his thoughts, the rest are details.

These proposals spring, without ulterior purpose or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples--those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country. They conform to our firm faith that God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his The Chance for Peace speech shortly after taking office and following the death of Joseph Stalin



Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste? Deathbird Stories, by Harlan Ellison [1]



It is not by accident that the enormous popularity of the “death of God” was born in our world of images: the impossibility of representing God visually leads inevitably in our day to the impossibility of his existence. God is dead—but beyond all the explicit reasons generally offered, he is dead because he is not visible. We can have confidence only in a visible God who is clearly manifested, exclusively in the visual dimension. Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word (1981), J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 198



Throughout the Old Testament we see God choosing what is weak and humble to represent him (the stammering Moses, the infant Samuel, Saul from an insignificant family, David confronting Goliath, etc.). Paul tells us that God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. Here, however, we have a striking contradiction. In Constantine God is supposedly choosing an Augustus, a triumphant military leader. This vision and this miracle are totally impossible. But they are not impossible in the context of Christianity that is already off the rails, that thinks of God as the one who directs history and is the motive power in politics. Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity (1982), G. Bromiley, trans. (1986), p. 123



When we consider what is our thought of God we find that it is our own soul stripped of all inferiority and carried out to perfection. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sermon 86 (1830), The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson , Volume 2 (1990), p. 243



By going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books. He will come to hear God speak as audibly through his own lips as ever He did by the mouth of Moses or Isaiah or Milton. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal Entry, October 21, 1833



The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. The highest revelation is that God is in every man. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1822–1863), 8 September 1833. As quoted in: Maurice York and Rick Spaulding (2008): Ralph Waldo Emerson – The Infinitude of the Private Man: A Biography. Chicago and Raleigh: Wrighwood Press, pages 240 – 241. Derived from: Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (1909): Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with annotations , III, pages 200-201.



Man thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Addresses and Lectures, Complete Works (1883), vol. 1, p. 92



In calling his two sons by the names of Gershom and Eliezer, Moses, like Joseph and other righteous men, intended to have the fact of God's help constantly before him. Since his sons would be with him, and he would often address them or call them by name, he would remember his gratitude to God. Exodus Rabbah 1 , Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 89



There is no place without God's presence. Even in the bush He was present, and this was the lesson of God's omnipresence that Moses learnt when he was called out of the bush. Exodus Rabbah 2 , Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 91



Moses wanted to know God's name, and God tells him, 'I am that I am'; that is to say, 'I am called--or to be called-in accordance with my work in this world.' When I judge mankind I am אלהים Elohim, that being the title or designation for judgment. When I war with the wicked I am known as צבאות Zevooth. When I execute judgment for the sins of man I am known as אלשדי El Shadai, and when I am visiting the world with mercy I am אבני or יהוה Adonoi, the Eternal. Exodus Rabbah 3 , Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 91



The matron whom we find so often arguing with Rabbi José observed one day to that sage, 'My god is surely greater than yours. When your God appeared to Moses in the bush, Moses merely covered his face, whilst when my god (the serpent) made its appearance he could not stand his ground at all, but had to run away out of fear.' 'Not so, 'returned the Rabbi, 'for in order to be out of the power of your god it sufficed for Moses to step a few paces back, but whither could he have fled from the presence of Him who filleth the earth?' Exodus Rabbah 3 , Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 92



I am the first and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God' (Isa. 43. 6) I am the first, I have no father; I am the last, I have no brother. Beside Me there is no God; I have no son. Exodus Rabbah 29 , Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 103



When God first called Moses, not being then an expert prophet, he was addressed in a voice similar to that of his own father, and he thought that his father had come to him from Egypt. God then told him that it was not his earthly father who called him, but the God of his father. Then, we find, Moses hid his face, which he did not do when first called by his name; not in fact until he heard the words, 'I am the God of thy fathers.' Exodus Rabbah 45 , Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 108



F [ edit ]

The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church. ... She does not call the native to God’s ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of The Earth (1963), p. 42



God is for man the commonplace book where he registers his highest feelings and thoughts, the genealogical album into which he enters the names of the things most dear and sacred to him. Ludwig Feuerbach, in The Essence of Christianity (1843), p. xvi



By positing God as unknowable, man excuses himself to what is still left of his religious conscience for his oblivion of God, his surrender to the world. He negates God in practice – his mind and his senses have been absorbed by the world – but he does not negate him in theory. He does not attack his existence; he leaves it intact. But this existence neither affects nor incommodes him, for it is only a negative existence, an existence without existence; it is an existence that contradicts itself – a being that, in view of its effects, is indistinguishable from non-being. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (1843), Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 112



When the claims of God are revealed to the mind, it must necessarily yield to them, or strengthen itself in sin. It must, as it were, gird itself up, and struggle to resist the claims of duty. This strengthening self in sin under light is the particular form of sin which we call impenitence. Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878), p. 369



There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), p. 99



I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being. Pope Francis, interviewed in "How the Church will change" by Eugenio Scalfari in La Repubblica (1 October 2013), as translated from Italian to English by Kathryn Wallace

Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator.

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? Benjamin Franklin, debates in the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 28, 1787); reported in James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention , ed. E. H. Scott (1893), p. 259–60. Franklin suggests that the Convention begin its sessions with prayers "imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations".



G [ edit ]

It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each. ~ Geronimo

I looked and looked but I didn't see God. Attributed to Yuri Gagarin after becoming the first person to orbit the Earth, as quoted in To Rise from Earth (1996) by Wayne Lee; the authenticity of this remark is disputed; Colonel Valentin Petrov stated in 2006 that the cosmonaut never said such words, and that the quote originated from Nikita Khrushchev's speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU about the state's anti-religion campaign, saying "Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god there." Sometimes misquoted as "I see no God up here" as if he said this in space, but there are no transcripts or recordings indicating that he ever did.



I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. Galileo Galilei. in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), an essay published in 1615, in response to enquiries of Christina of Tuscany, as quoted in Aspects of Western Civilization : Problems and Sources in History (1988) by Perry McAdow Rogers, p. 53 Variant translation: I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.



Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe. Attributed to Galileo Galilei in Statistics: Concepts and Applications (1994) by Harry Frank and Steven C. Althoen, p. xxi



It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Young India (24 September 1931); also in Teachings Of Mahatma Gandhi (1945), edited by Jag Parvesh Chander, p. 458

The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe.

People are even more reluctant to admit that man explains nothing, than they were to admit that God explains nothing. Ernest Gellner, Legitimation of Belief (1974), p. 99



I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each. Geronimo, as quoted in Geronimo's Story of His Life (1907) as told to S.M. Barrett in 1905 and 1906, "Usen" is the Apache word for God.



If we desire to hold on to solidarity with everyone else in the communicative fellowship, even the dead ... then we must claim a reality that can reach beyond the here and now, or that can connect our selves beyond our own death with those who innocently went to their destruction before us. And it is this reality that the Christian tradition calls God. Jens Glebe-Möller, A Political Dogmatic (1987), p. 102



We all of us try to make God in our image. It is one of the worst of our temptations. Elizabeth Goudge, The Bird in the Tree (1940), Chapter 6.3



Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs. Stephen Jay Gould, in "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge" in Scientific American (July 1992)



The love of gain, which is a large, incalculably large, element in every soul, when once applied to the desire for God, will bless the man who has it. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity , Chapter 18



In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt. Gregory I, quoted in George D. Herron, Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), pp. 111-112



As one reads the scriptures of Christianity and Islam with a morally alert mind, one starts getting sick of the very sound of word ‘god’ which word is littered all over this literature like dead leaves in autumn. The deeds which are ascribed to or approved of by this God are quite often so cruel and obnoxious as to leave one wondering that if these are the doings of the Divine, what else is there which is left for the Devil to do. Sita Ram Goel, Defence of Hindu Society (1983)



H [ edit ]

The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The prophet disdains those for whom God's presence is a comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

The concept of God was for a long time the place where the idea was kept alive that there are other norms besides those to which nature and society give expression in their operation. ~ Max Horkheimer

Give according to your means, or God will make your means according to your giving. Reverend John Hall, reported in Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), p. 194



Maybe God isn't the sex police, Richard. Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, am I a good person? […] It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God? Anita Blake, to Richard Zeeman Laurell K. Hamilton (June 2007). "chapter 44". The Harlequin (1st edition ed.). Berkley Books. pp. pp. 391-392. ISBN 978-0-425-21724-5.

It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God?

No matter how much I probe and prod,

I cannot quite believe in God;

But oh, I hope to God that He

Unswervingly believes in me. Yip Harburg, Rhymes for the Irreverent , (1965)

I cannot quite believe in God; But oh, I hope to God that He Unswervingly believes in me.

To the extent that we are free we are like God, who has no need of an idea of a God over Godself or of an incentive other than the moral law itself. But to the extent that we are also natural beings, we desire our own happiness in everything else that we desire, and we need the practical postulate of God to bring that happiness together with morality. John E. Hare, “Ethics and Religion: Two Kantian Arguments,” Philosophical Investigations , vol. 34, no. 2 (April 2011), p. 165



You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, ‘When you’re done, I’m going to punish you.’ If I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That’s the difference between me and your God. Tracie Harris, The Atheist Experience Youtube Jan 6 2013 as quoted in Atheist Experience Child Rape Huffington Post



Futurist Aldo Palazzeschi... exhorts us in L'antidolore (1913) to laugh heartily at the mortality built into the plan of creation not out of spite, as has traditionally been the case, but because suffering and death are nothing but pranks of the prime trickster, God. If anything it is the devil who is the spirit of gravity, and it is in taking him seriously that we plummet from grace. Thomas Harrison, in "Laughter and the Tree Of Knowledge" in the Romanic Review (May-November 2006)

(1913) to laugh heartily at the mortality built into the plan of creation not out of spite, as has traditionally been the case, but because suffering and death are nothing but pranks of the prime trickster, God. If anything it is the devil who is the spirit of gravity, and it is in taking him seriously that we plummet from grace.

The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Logic , Chapter 1



I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith — it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe. Robert A. Heinlein, in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)



God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent — it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills. Robert A. Heinlein, in Time Enough for Love (1973), p. 264



The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.

The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful. Robert A. Heinlein, in Time Enough for Love (1973), p. 266

The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.

How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in his divine system of creation? Joseph Heller, Catch 22



Restore to God His due in tithe and time;

A tithe purloin'd cankers the whole estate. George Herbert, The Temple (1633), The Church Porch , Stanza 65

A tithe purloin'd cankers the whole estate.

The prophet disdains those for whom God's presence is a comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (1962), p. 16



Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas. Christopher Hitchens, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish (1990), Chatto Counterblasts



Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise! Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)

creator, infinite regression, drowned in praise!

Consciousness is Gods' gift to mankind. Dr. Albert Hofmann discoverer of LSD (15 January 2006)



God only speaks to those who understand the language Dr. Albert Hofmann, (15 January 2006)



The concept of God was for a long time the place where the idea was kept alive that there are other norms besides those to which nature and society give expression in their operation. Max Horkheimer, "Thoughts on Religion," Critical Theory: Selected Essays (1995), p. 129



The significance of God, cause, number, substance or soul consists, as James asserts, in nothing but the tendency of the given concept to make us act or think. If the world should reach a point at which it ceases to care not only about such metaphysical entities but also about murders perpetrated behind closed frontiers or simply in the dark, one would have to conclude that the concepts of such murders have no meaning, that they represent no ‘distinct ideas’ or truths, since they do not make any ‘sensible difference to anybody.’ Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 46-47



Nothing could be more untrue than the often-repeated statement that we all worship the same God; or that other, that whatever we worship the result is the same. Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God (London: Sheed & Ward, 1944), p. 85



The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"

"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.

"But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe in God when you're alone–quite alone, in the night, thinking about death …"

"But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it." Aldous Huxley, Brave New World ch. 17 [2]

"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to. "But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe in God when you're alone–quite alone, in the night, thinking about death …" "But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it."

Why did it occur to anyone to believe in only one God? And conversely why did it ever occur to anyone to believe in many gods? To both these questions we must return the same answer: Because that is how the human mind happens to work. For the human mind is both diverse and simple, simultaneously many and one. We have an immediate perception of our own diversity and of that of the outside world. And at the same time we have immediate perceptions of our own oneness. Aldous Huxley, “One and Many,” Do What You Will (1928), p. 12



I [ edit ]

Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man. Robert Ingersoll (14 October 1879)



God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don’t feel so well myself. Eugène Ionesco, as quoted in Jewish American Literature : A Norton Anthology (2000) by Jules Chametzky, "Jewish Humor", p. 318



J [ edit ]

I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. ~ Jesus

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The theory of an existing and benevolent god simply doesn't make sense to anyone who is rational. A benevolent and omnipotent god would never allow such imbalances as I see to exist for one second. If by chance I am wrong, however I must then assume that being born black called for some automatic punishment for sins I know nothing about, and being innocent it behooves me to defy god. George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

God's on your side? Shit, I'm alright with that. Because we're going to reload the clips and come right back. Curtis J. Jackson, "Heat" (2003), Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003), by C.J. Jackson III.



It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Thomas Jefferson, Query 17 in Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785)



Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. Thomas Jefferson, Query 18 in Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-1785)



Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr from Paris, France, (10 August 1787)



No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Smith (1822)



The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.

1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect. 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments. 3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, (26 June 1822)

*I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.

Jesus quoted in Psalms 82:6



Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature. Jinasena (9th Century) in the Mahāpurāna , as translated in Primal Myths (1979) by Barbara Sproul



The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence. St. John of the Cross in The Sayings of Light and Love as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)



God is a dark night to man in this life. St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel , I, 2, 1



All-thing hath the Being by the love of God. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 5



God is all that is good, as to my sight, and the goodness that each thing hath, it is He. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 8



God willeth that we endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loveth it. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 40



Truth seeth God, and Wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the third: that is, a holy marvellous delight in God; which is Love. Where Truth and Wisdom are verily, there is Love verily, coming of them both. And all of God’s making: for He is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, endless sovereign Love, unmade; and man’s Soul is a creature in God which hath the same properties made , and evermore it doeth that it was made for: it seeth God, it beholdeth God, and it loveth God. Whereof God enjoyeth in the creature; and the creature in God, endlessly marvelling.

In which marvelling he seeth his God, his Lord, his Maker so high, so great, and so good, in comparison with him that is made, that scarcely the creature seemeth ought to the self. But the clarity and the clearness of Truth and Wisdom maketh him to see and to bear witness that he is made for Love, in which God endlessly keepeth him. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 44

And all of God’s making: for He is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, endless sovereign Love, unmade; and man’s Soul is a creature in God which hath the same properties , and evermore it doeth that it was made for: it seeth God, it beholdeth God, and it loveth God. Whereof God enjoyeth in the creature; and the creature in God, endlessly marvelling.

Highly ought we to rejoice that God dwelleth in our soul, and much more highly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwelleth in God. Our soul is made to be God’s dwelling-place; and the dwelling-place of the soul is God, Which is unmade . And high understanding it is, inwardly to see and know that God, which is our Maker, dwelleth in our soul; and an higher understanding it is, inwardly to see and to know that our soul, that is made, dwelleth in God’s Substance: of which Substance, God, we are that we are.

And I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God; and yet mine understanding took that our Substance is in God: that is to say, that God is God, and our Substance is a creature in God. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love ( c .1393), Ch. 54

Our soul is to be God’s dwelling-place; and the dwelling-place of the soul is God, Which is . And high understanding it is, inwardly to see and know that God, which is our Maker, dwelleth in our soul; and an higher understanding it is, inwardly to see and to know that our soul, that is made, dwelleth in God’s Substance: of which Substance, God, we are that we are. And I saw no difference between God and our Substance: but as it were all God; and yet mine understanding took that our Substance is in God: that is to say, that

As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c.1393), Ch. 59



I beheld with reverent dread, and highly marvelling in the sight and in the feeling of the sweet accord, that our Reason is in God ; understanding that it is the highest gift that we have received; and it is grounded in nature. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love ( c .1393), Ch. 83

; understanding that it is the highest gift that we have received; and it is grounded in nature.

I saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us; which love was never slacked, nor ever shall be. And in this love He hath done all His works; and in this love He hath made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 86



A god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum : God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God. C. G. Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1988), p. 40

: God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God.

K [ edit ]

May His great Name be blessed forever and ever. The Kaddish Prayer: A new translation with a commentary anthologized from Talmudic, Midrashic and Rabbinic sources. New York: Mesorah Publications, Ltd., 2001, ISBN 0-89906-160-5, p.7



We are to love God, not for the gifts he bestows upon us but for the sake of love itself. Eyran Katsenelenbogen, One Time (2018)



If they are gods, they are responsible for the horror that occurs in the world. So they are evil. Why otherwise would they allow things to be as they are? John Kessel, Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance (2009) in Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (eds.) The New Space Opera 2, p. 91



Indeed, if we are ever to be free human beings, and not puppets jerked about by unseen forces—which may or may not exist—the gods must go. John Kessel, Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance (2009) in Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (eds.) The New Space Opera 2, p. 102



The Christian God is spirit and Christianity is spirit, and there is discord between the flesh and the spirit but the flesh is not the sensuous-it is the selfish. In this sense, even the spiritual can become sensuous-for example, if a person took his spiritual gifts in vain, he would then be carnal. And of course I know that it is not necessary for the Christian that Christ must have been physically beautiful; and it would be grievous-for a reason different from the one you give-because if beauty were some essential, how the believer would long to see him; but from all this it by no means follows that the sensuous is annihilated in Christianity. Soren Kierkegaard Either/Or Part II (1843) as translated by Hong, p. 50



If everything is assumed to be in order with regard to the Holy Scriptures-what then? Has the person who did not believe come a single step closer to faith? No, not a single step. Faith does not result from straightforward scholarly deliberation, nor does it come directly; on the contrary, in this objectivity one loses that infinite, personal, impassioned interestedness, which is the condition of faith, the everywhere and nowhere in which faith can come into existence. Has the person who did believe gained anything with regard to the power and strength of faith? No, not in the least; in this prolix knowledge, in this certainty that lurks at faith’s door and craves for it, he is rather in such a precarious position that much effort, much fear and trembling will be needed lest he fall into temptation and confuse knowledge with faith. Whereas up to now faith has been a beneficial taskmaster in uncertainty, but it would be its worst enemy in this certainty. If passion is taken away, faith no longer exists, and certainty and passion do not hitch up as a team. Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846) as translated by Hong, p. 29



To live only in the unconditional, to breathe only the unconditional – the human being cannot do this; he perishes like a fish that must live in the air. But on the other hand a human being cannot in the deeper sense live without relating himself to the unconditional; he expires, that is, perhaps goes on living, but spiritlessly. Thus the single individual must personally relate himself to the unconditional. I believed, and do believe, that this is Christianity and love for “the neighbor.” The Point of View On My Work As An Author by Soren Kierkegaard (finished 1848) published by Peter Christian Kierkegaard 1859 translated by Howard and Edna Hong 1998 Princeton University Press P. 19-20

individual must personally relate himself to the unconditional. I believed, and do believe, that this is Christianity and love for “the neighbor.”

God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live. Stephen King, Desperation



God said take what you want ... and pay for it. Stephen King, Desperation , said by the character "Johnny Marinville"



Alex : You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise god! A Clockwork Orange screenplay by Stanley Kubrick.

: You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now 