quotations about God
I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Man ... has an inborn religious sentiment that whispers of a God to his inmost soul, as a shell taken from the deep yet echoes forever the ocean's roar.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
You say you will never believe in God until the fact of his existence is proved to you! Then you will never believe in him at all; for, in the face of positive knowledge, faith is no longer possible. Faith affirms in the presence of the unknown. If science should ever demonstrate the existence of God (which it never can) faith would become lost in sight, and men would no longer believe, but know. The reason why science is intrinsically incompetent to either prove or disprove the existence of God, is simply this, that the subject-matter transcends the reach of scientific instruments and processes. The dispute is, therefore, not between faith and science, but between faith and unbelief. Unbelief is a disease, not of the human understanding, but of the human will, and is susceptible to cure.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
The Blazing Star
He who looks for the worst in men will not be without belief in a personal devil; he who looks for the best in men will not be without faith in a personal God.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Religion and Science
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Book of Job: An Introduction"
Religion is ... being as much like God as man can be.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
God is like us to this extent, that whatever in us is good is like God.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Do you not see the hand of God, which gives harmony, light, and love to the world? Do not the mountains, in the blue cloud of incense, sing their hymn of glory?
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped
But if God was in a continual vigilance, either there was something wanting to make him happy, or else his beatitude was perfectly complete; but according to neither of these can God be said to be blessed; not according to the first, for if there be any deficiency there is no perfect bliss; not according to the second, for, if there be nothing wanting to the felicity of God, it must be a needless enterprise for him to busy himself in human affairs. And how can it be supposed that God administers by his own providence human concerns, when to vain and trifling persons prosperous things happen, to great and high adverse?
PLUTARCH
"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies
What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.
STEPHEN HAWKING
Der Spiegel, Oct. 17, 1988
Gods die when they are forgotten.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me, "Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian beaver cheese is equally valid"-then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
American Atheist Magazine, winter 1998-1999
God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.
NORMAN MAILER
"Advertisement for Myself on the Way Out," Advertisements for Myself
The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.
JAMES MADISON
letter to Frederick Beasley, Nov. 20, 1825
God is either powerless, stupid or he doesn't give a shit.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
God is in the tiger as well as in the lamb.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit Redux
Let every man come to God in his own way.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The great soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
Gold-Foil
God is the only being who need not even exist in order to reign.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Fusées