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Jonathan Edwards 79
Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian 1703–1758Related quotes

“A god is the idea of a god. The idea of a god is a god.”
De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: A god is the idea of a god. The idea of a god is a god. The idea of Glycon is Glycon, if I can enhance that idea with an anaconda and a speaking tube, fair enough. I am unlikely to start believing that this glove puppet created the universe. It’s a fiction, all gods are fiction. It’s just that I happen to think that fiction’s real. Or that it has its own reality, that is just as valid as ours. I happen to believe that most of the important things in the material world start out as fiction. That everything around us was once fiction – before there was the table there was the idea of a table, and the idea of a table before tables was fiction. This is the most important world, the world of fictional things. That’s the world where all this starts.

“the strange ideas we derive today will one day be our celebrated truths”
Source: The Lost Symbol

"Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history." — Henry James (1879-1947), Charles W. Eliot (1930), 2 vol. This namesake was James' nephew, the son of William James. His life of Eliot earned him the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Misattributed

“The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.”
Mike Wallace interview (4 November 1958), quoted in The Great Quotations (1966) by George Seldes
Other speeches and writings

“Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?”
Source: The House of Mirth
“There's a huge difference between a good idea and a God-inspired idea.”
It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

“Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.”