National Prayer Breakfast (2006)
Context: A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord's blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it... I have a family, please look after them... I have this crazy idea...
And this wise man said: stop.
He said, stop asking God to bless what you're doing.
Get involved in what God is doing — because it's already blessed.
“Stop telling God what to do with his dice.”
A response to Einstein's assertion that "God doesn't play dice"; a similar statement is attributed to Enrico Fermi
Disputed
Variant: Einstein, don't tell God what to do.
Variant: Don't tell God what to do with his dice.
Variant: You ought not to speak for what Providence can or can not do. – As described in The Physicists: A generation that changed the world (1981) by C. P. Snow, p. 84
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Niels Bohr 37
Danish physicist 1885–1962Related quotes
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
Source: The Born-Einstein Letters 1916-55
“Not only does God play dice with the world—He does not let us see what He has rolled.”
Imaginary Magnitude" (1981), "Lecture XLIII", tr. Marc E. Heine (1984)
Journal of Discourses 12:262 (Aug. 9, 1868)
1860s
“The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not.”
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Context: The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They don't care if when you go, you leave behind a lover, a home, a career, or a dream. The gods don't care whether you have it all, whether it seems that your every desire can be met through hard work and persistence. The gods don't want to know about your plans and your hopes. Somewhere they're throwing the dice — and you are chosen. From then on, winning or losing is only a question of luck.
The gods throw the dice, freeing love from its cage. And love can create or destroy — depending on the direction of the wind when it is set free.
During the same 1994 exchange with Penrose as the previous quote, transcribed in The Nature of Space and Time (1996) by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, p. 26 http://books.google.com/books?id=LstaQTXP65cC&lpg=PA26&dq=hawking%20%22where%20they%20can't%20be%20seen%22&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q=&f=false and also in "The Nature of Space and Time" (online text) http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9409195
Unsourced variants: Not only does God play dice with the Universe; he sometimes casts them where they can't be seen.
Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
Variant: So Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.
“God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.”
Referencing Albert Einstein's famous remark that "God does not play dice with the universe", this is attributed to Erdős in "Mathematics : Homage to an Itinerant Master" by D. Mackenzie, in Science 275:759 (1997), but has also been stated to be a comment originating in a talk given by Carl Pomerance on the Erdős-Kac theorem, in San Diego in January 1997, a few months after Erdős's death. Confirmation of this by Pomerance is reported in a statement posted to the School of Engineering, Computer Science & Mathematics, University of Exeter http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/mrwatkin//kac-pomerance.txt, where he states it was a paraphrase of something he imagined Erdős and Mark Kac might have said, and presented in a slide-show, which subsequently became reported in a newspaper as a genuine quote of Erdős the next day. In his slide show he had them both reply to Einstein's assertion: "Maybe so, but something is going on with the primes."
Misattributed
Source: My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year
“Stop…
Stop what you're doing…
Stop what you're doing and breathe.”
Breathe
Breathe (2006)