Sunday, December 06, 2009

The Quote File: God

It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us. - Peter De Vries

God is of no importance unless He is of utmost importance. - Abraham Joshua Heschel

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe in the God idea, not God himself. - Miguel de Unamuno

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in. - Sam Harris

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 cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. - Albert Einstein

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. - Thomas Jefferson

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws. - John Adams

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

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey. - Robert Green Ingersoll

Your mind works very simply: you are either trying to find out what are God's laws in order to follow them; or you are trying to outsmart Him. - Martin H. Fischer

A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers no harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. - Abraham Joshua Heschel

Someday, after we have mastered the wind, the waves, tides and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. - Teilhard de Chardin

God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

God made man because He loves stories. - Elie Wiesel

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars. – Martin Luther

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things. - Vincent van Gogh

We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe. - Miguel de Unamuno

God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed. - Saint Augustine

Life is God's novel. Let him write it. - Isaac Bashevis Singer

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More -- and several of these quotations taken from -- here.

11 comments:

  1. Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus

    --

    I think He would be utterly malevolent and evil if He DIDN'T allow us free will. I don't want to be an automaton. Freedom, if it means we choose our death, despair, and destruction. What kind of God does not allow us the right to make our own choices?

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  2. I stumbled across a quote the other day that I believe would go well with this list. Attributed to Anne Lamott:

    "You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do."

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  3. Maybe it's because I'm a writer, but I have always thought of God as the great Author...so this one really resonated with me. :)

    God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars. – Martin Luther

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  4. As seen on my own Live Journal main page: copying and pasting one of my favorite G-d quotes:

    "Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference."
    -Kurt Vonnegut

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  5. Thank you for sharing those interesting quotes. I would like to share a quote from from a 1993 Vatican publication called "The Catechism of the Catholic Church." I also referenced this on my blog a couple weeks ago:
    "The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality "that everyone calls 'God"

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  6. "'Yes,' said Queen Lucy. 'In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.'"

    --The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

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  7. God is the perfect poet. - Robert Browning

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  8. These are fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing them.

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  9. These are great and thought provoking. I can see a great world being build from this one:

    Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in. - Sam Harris

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