Quotes about God
page 100

“Absolutists frighten me. During all the endless discussions on my blog about evolution, intelligent design, God, and the afterworld, numbering altogether thousands of comments, I have never named my beliefs, although readers have freely informed me that I am an atheist, and agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

which I am.
Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

Intelligence

“Man is the miracle in nature and nature is natural. God
Is the One Miracle to man. Behold,
"There is a God," thou sayest. Thou sayest well:
In that thou sayest all. To Be is more
Of wonderful, than being, to have wrought,
Or reigned, or rested.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

Story of Doom (1867), Book VII, line 271.

Nature

“Life everywhere is in vast and endless variety. So it is with life eternal, that gift of God, constituting, in its length and breadth and height and depth, the reward of the righteous. The penitent, dying thief is not going into heaven like the triumphant, dying Paul.”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 211.

Life

“There is no way from us to God — not even via negativa not even a via dialectica nor paradoxa. The god who stood at the end of some human way — even of this way — would not be God.”

Karl Barth (1886–1968) Swiss Protestant theologian

The Word of God and the Word of Man (1928)

Way

“Always remember, as bad as it may be for you, it is worse for the lost. They may have it better for a while if they go along with the beast and take his mark, but that “better” will come to an end. Those who obeyed Hitler had it good, too—for a few years. The lost face some of the same problems of economic collapse, wars, earthquakes, PLUS, they will be here for the next 1,040 days of God's wrath being poured out after the rapture and THEN eternity in the Lake of Fire!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 235

War, Problem

“Lord, the day is at hand. We are in the last days. You are a Jehovah God. We know that the times are in your hands. And we give them to you…The day is at hand, Lord, when your return will come nigh. Nothing is more important than bringing sheep into the fold. Than bringing new life into the kingdom…You have weeded that garden. The harvest is at hand.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Praying for You Can Run But You Can't Hide ministry in 2006
Bachmann Predicted The World Would End In 2006: ‘We Are In The Last Days’
Marie
Diamond
2011-07-18
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/07/18/264811/bachmann-predicted-world-end-2006/
2011-07-18
2010s

Life, Time

“In fact, for those who feel themselves excluded, or treated as defective, by the reigning social and moral order, it is of incalculable importance to discover that this feeling of being excluded or defective has nothing to do with God. It is purely a social mechanism, and God rather wants to include us and carry us to a fullness of life which will probably cause scandal to the partisans of the reigning order.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " The man blind from birth and the Creator's subversion of sin http://girardianlectionary.net/res/fbr_ch-1_john9.htm", p. 18.

Life, Feeling

“The foundation of all religion is the belief in a God, and that He exists in certain relation with His creatures. Such belief necessarily leads to the consciousness of some obligation towards the Deity; and this consciousness suggests the duty of worship; and in the selection of the form of this worship originates the various creeds which distinguish and distract mankind. There is a sort of geography of religion; and I regret to think that the majority of mankind take their creed from the clime in which they happen to be born; and that many, and not an inconsiderable portion of mankind, suffer the sacred torch to burn out altogether, in their contact with the world, and then vainly imagine that they can recover the sacred fire by striking a park out of dogmatic theology.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix: Religion, Note (B) pp. 491-492
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

World, Religion, Imagination, Thinking

“Everything in this world changes; only God remains the same forever. If mankind will realize this truth, then we can avert disaster by coming together with faith in God and living in unity and compassion. Do not live divided. With compassion for each other, live in unity and truth, in the presence of God. Live according to justice and conscience, respecting the lives and bodies of all others as your own, and knowing the hunger and the suffering of others as your own. Have patience, contentment, trust in God, and live praising God at all times, and peace will be easy.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Hunger, Truth, World, Peace

“It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Life, Feeling

“Over unforced love, the gods themselves had no might.”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 12 (p. 76)

Love

“Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He packs our life with surprises all the time.”

Oswald Chambers book My Utmost for His Highest

My Utmost for His Highest (1956). Section "April 30".

Life, Sadness, Way, Sense

“Let reason count the stars, weigh the mountains, fathom the depths — the employment becomes her, and the success is glorious. But when the question is, "How shall man be just with God?" reason must be silent, revelation must speak; and he who will not hear it assimilates himself to the first deist, Cain; he may not kill a brother, he certainly destroys himself.”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 488.

Mountain, Star, Question, Success

“If He [whom God shall manifest] shall appear in the number of Ghiyath and all shall enter in, not one shall remain in the Fire. If He tarry until [the number of] Mustaghath, all shall enter in, not one shall remain in the Fire, but all shall be transformed into His light.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

II, 17
The Persian Bayán

Light, Appearance

“Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 863

People, Books, Understanding, Knowledge

“It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God’s finger crushes against the wall.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 2, sc. 4
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“Our Christian God, the merciful, forgiving God, the personification of eternal love, our father, as Christ has taught us, had absolutely not the slightest thing in common with the vengeful bloodthirsty, angry old Jaweh of the Jews…the old Jew-God Jaweh is…identical with Satan!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Letter to Eva Chamberlain-Wagner (14 April 1927), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1236
1920s

Love, Forgiveness, Christ

“Because the sin which she encouraged him to commit was in all likelihood a sin of sensuality, woman is more intensely exposed to the danger of descent into stark carnality. And when this happens, she always becomes once again the evil seductress, whereas, paradoxically, God has specifically enjoined her to combat evil.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace (1932)

Evil

“The universe,” says Wyvern, “is a Ph. D. thesis that God was unable to successfully defend.”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 13 (p. 221)

Universe

“The humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them for eternity.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Letter XV
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Time

“Shykh Nuruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi was the most important disciple of Shykh Shihabuddin Suhrawardi, founder of the second most important sufi silsila after the Chishtiyya, who died in Baghdad in 1235 AD. Ghaznavi had come and settled down in India where he passed away in 1234-35 AD. He served as Shykh-ul-Islam in the reign of Shamsuddin Iltutmish (AD 1210-1236), and propounded the doctrine of Din Panahi. Barani quotes the first principle of this doctrine as follows in his Tarikh-i-Firuzshahi. “The kings should protect the religion of Islam with sincere faith… And kings will not be able to perform the duty of protecting the Faith unless, for the sake of God and the Prophet’s creed, they overthrow and uproot kufr and kafiri (infidelity), shirk (setting partners to God) and the worship of idols. But if the total uprooting of idolatry is not possible owing to the firm roots of kufr and the large number of kafirs and mushriks (infidels and idolaters), the kings should at least strive to insult, disgrace, dishonour and defame the mushrik and idol-worshipping Hindus, who are the worst enemies of God and the Prophet. The symptom of the kings being the protectors of religion is this:- When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot the Brahmans, who are the leaders of kufr and shirk and owning to whom kufr and shirk are spread and the commandments of kufr are enforced… Owing to the fear and terror of the kings of Islam, not a single enemy of God and the Prophet can drink water that is sweet or stretch his legs on his bed and go to sleep in peace.””

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231
Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi

Fear, Peace, Faith, Religion

“The problem is, after a week of intense googling, we’ve started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

People, Way, Feeling, Problem

“I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is … for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.”

Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989) English philosopher

On his greater appreciation of the scenery of the world, after his near-death experience, as quoted in "Did atheist philosopher see God when he 'died'?" by William Cash, in National Post (3 March 2001).

Beauty, Sea

“Rocks and waters, etc., are words of God and so are men. We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter http://digitalcollections.pacific.edu/cdm/ref/collection/muirletters/id/9847/show/9846 to Catharine Merrill, from New Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Valley (9 June 1872); published in William Federic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 9: Persons and Problems 1870s

Love, Men, People, Soul

“If you were to really hate and dislike a picture with all your heart, so that you could not bear to see or hear of it, how would you like it if someone insisted on getting to know and honor you through such a hated, horrible book? … And God says that he does not like any image which we make, and … that he hates and despises all who love images.”

Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541) German theologian

Source: On the Removal of Images (1522), p. 109

Love, Hate, Books, Heart

“What is most needed today is a fundamental theological thinking, one centered upon the Godhead itself, and centered upon that which is most challenging or most offensive in the Godhead, one which has truly been veiled in the modern world, except by our most revolutionary thinkers and visionaries. If we allow Blake and Nietzsche to be paradigmatic of those revolutionaries, nowhere else does such a centering upon God or the Godhead occur, although a full parallel to this occurs in Spinoza and Hegel; but the language of Hegel and Spinoza is not actually offensive, or not in its immediate impact, whereas the language of Nietzsche and Blake is the most purely offensive language which has ever been inscribed. Above all this is true of the theological language of Blake and Nietzsche, but here a theological language is a truly universal language, one occurring in every domain, and occurring as that absolute No which is the origin of every repression and every darkness, and a darkness which is finally the darkness of God, or the darkness of that Godhead which is beyond “God.” Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy.”

Thomas J. J. Altizer (1927–2018) American radical theologian

Godhead and the Nothing (2003), Preface

World, Thinking, Universe, Joy

“The Bible is not a divine revelation from God. It is not inspired; on the contrary, it is a wicked book …. It has been responsible for more suffering and torture than any other volume ever printed……”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Books, Suffering

“And that is all the Pope is saying to another human being. God made you the way you are, and loves you for it, and wants you to be happy as yourself. How much agony and pain has there been across so many centuries because we could not open our hearts to this truth? It is so strange to me how so many nonbelievers can see in this Pope’s interaction with others the spirit of Jesus, and how so many of the most devout seem terrified by it.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

“God Made You Like That” http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/andrew-sullivan-why-we-should-say-yes-to-drugs.html, New York magazine (25 May, 2018)

Love, Pain, Happiness, Truth

“The Truth that is to be Realized may be summarized simply as the Realization that no matter what is arising, no matter how many others are present, there is only One Being. This is precisely different from the childish but common religious notion that even when you are alone there is always Someone Else present, Who will look out for you if you do the right thing. True freedom is not a matter of striking a deal with an All-Powerful Parental Deity; no such God exists. True freedom is in the Realization that there is only God and You are That One.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

http://www.aboutadidam.org/readings/index.html

Truth, Parent, Freedom

“It was not so long ago that the Bible enjoyed a stranglehold similar to that of the Quran over vast populations in the West. The theocracies propped up by the Bible in Europe and America had enacted similar sagas of slaughter and pillage for several centuries. But a sustained Western scholarship showed up the Bible for what it was. “It would be more consistent,” proclaimed Thomas Pain, “that we call it [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God.” The spell of Jehovah was broken…. The rest is history. Christianity is now seeking a refuge in countries like India where its rout in the West remains unknown.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Pain, History, Country

“The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” John 1:1, 2. Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6. His “goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Micah 5:2. And the Son of God declares concerning Himself: “The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting. … When He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.””

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Proverbs 8:22-30. Patriarchs and Prophets 34.1 https://egwwritings.org/?ref=en_PP.34.1&para=84.75

Happiness, Peace, Way, Nature

“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 S. Collins (1950) Geneticist; Director of the National Institutes of Health

cnn.com http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/

Faith, Music, Thinking, Reading

“Doubtless he was going to start bragging about being a god. It went with the profile of this sort of lunatic.”

Kage Baker book The Children of the Company

Source: The Children of the Company (2005), Chapter 4, “Son Observe the Time” (p. 209)

“If an infant commit an assault, or utter slander, God forbid that he should not be answerable for it in a Court of justice.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Jennings v. Rundall (1799), 8 T.R. 337.

Justice

“Macro rational expectations, as I have labeled the hypothesis, seems to say that expectations in an economist's model must be perfectly consistent with his model that embodies these expectations. In other words, the agents of his model must all share his views of the relevant economic mechanisms, as well as his data. Why? Because if he holds them they must believe they are God's truth and, if so, rational people can have no other views (and of course we should never ask how they would come by these views and data, that not even other specialists may have heard of yet, let alone accepted). I submit that this view is pretty absurd--I would almost say offensive! I certainly believe that I know more about economics and the economy than (almost) everybody else, and i can even prove it: If everybody shared my vies, then the economy could not be in today's troubles”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

though it might conceivably be in some different ones!
Conversations with Economists (1983)

People, Truth

“If this “sacred” book teaches man to enslave his brother, it is not inspired. A god who would establish slavery is as cruel and heartless as any devil could be.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Books

“The key to changing the world and pursuing justice and disarmament is to allow the God of peace to disarm our hearts, make us instruments of peace, and lead us together on the road of peace.”

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

From the homepage of his official website JohnDear.org http://johndear.org/ (2017).

World, Peace, Justice, Change

“An infant crying in the crib can better appreciate the character of its mother than we can fathom the full nature of God.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

Nature, Cry

“Just as in climbing a mountain we leave behind the earth where we stand, to reach the heart of God we have to leave behind unfavorable earthly attachments. Sincere spiritual practice is an uphill climb, and no matter how many difficulties we face, we have to continue looking upward with hope. The mountain provides all support for those who strive to reach its top. Similarly, if we are sincere, the Lord will provide us with the means to reach his supremely merciful heart.”

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

?
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Hope, Mountain, Support, Heart

“The hand of God creates; it does not conceal.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

William of Baskerville
The Name of the Rose (1980)

“For those who believe in God the matter is simpler still and clearly than anything else: because those who believe in God believe that God is the Creator of the whole Universe and there is nothing that does not come from Him.”

Morarji Desai (1896–1995) Former Indian Finance Minister, Freedom Fighters, Former prime minister

19th World Vegetarian Congress 1967

Universe

“Three points make me hardy to ask it. The first is, because it is so low a thing: for if it were an high thing I should be a-dread. The second is, that it is so common: for if it were special and privy, also I should be a-dread. The third is, that it needeth me to know it (as methinketh) if I shall live here for knowing of good and evil, whereby I may, by reason and grace, the more dispart them asunder, and love goodness and hate evil, as Holy Church teacheth. I cried inwardly, with all my might seeking unto God for help, saying thus: Ah! Lord Jesus, King of bliss, how shall I be eased? Who shall teach me and tell me that me needeth to know, if I may not at this time see it in Thee?”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 50

Love, Hate, Evil, Time

“And for ther is so gret diversite
In Englissh and in writyng of oure tonge,
So prey I God that non myswrite the,
Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge;
And red wherso thow be, or elles songe,
That thow be understonde, God I biseche!”

Geoffrey Chaucer book Troilus and Criseyde

Book 5, line 1793-1798
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)

“You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe. But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Life, Age, Fear, Religion

“Many Jews in the Communist conspiracy. Chambers and Hiss were the only non-Jews. Many thought that Hiss was. He could have been a half. Every other one was a Jew — and it raised hell for us. But in this case, I hope to God he's not a Jew.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Nixon, Haldeman, and Ronald Ziegler, 2:42-3:33 P.M. Oval Office Conversation #524-7; cassette #775 (17 June 1971)
1970s

Hope, Hell

“Up until today evil has lured goodness into evil, but goodness has not been able to lure evil into goodness. This may be the reason why up to today Christianity has not been able to boldly fulfill the Will of God.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

The Way of God's Will Chapter 1-4. Practice http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/WofGW/wogw1-04.htm Translated 1980.

Evil

“The two guides call out to a man early and late. And yet, no, for when remorse calls to a man it is always late. The call to find the way again by seeking out God in the confession of sins is always at the eleventh hour. Whether you are young or old, whether you have sinned much or little, whether you have offended much or neglected much, the guilt makes this call come at the eleventh hour. The inner agitation of the heart understands what remorse insists upon, that the eleventh hour has come. For in the sense of time, the old man’s age is the eleventh hour; and the instant of death, the final moment in the eleventh hour. The indolent youth speaks of a long life that lies before him. The indolent old man hopes that his death is still a long way off. But repentance and remorse belong to the eternal in a man.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, 1847 p. 40-41
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1847), Purity of Heart (1847)

Life, Death, Youth, Age

“I say that a God who would come between two who have been to each other what we have been, is not one I would heed.”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 20 (p. 141)

“Climate change is by no means the sole or even the most significant symptom of the changing interests and values of the West. Still, only societies with high levels of cultural amnesia – that have forgotten the scriptures about man created 'in the image and likeness of God' and charged with 'subduing the earth and all its creatures”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

could have made such a religion out of it. Quoted in "'I've learnt to speak my mind': 10 excerpts from Tony Abbott's climate change speech in London'" http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ive-learnt-to-speak-my-mind-ten-excerpts-from-tony-abbotts-climate-change-speech-in-london-20171009-gyxk92.html, Sydney Morning Herald, October 10, 2017 2017

Religion, Change

“Difficult trials will naturally evoke powerful emotions in us. How would your circumstances look today if you chose to focus first on God’s promises?”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 121

Nature

“I heard the hiss and felt the blessed numbness spreading. If there is a God, I thought, it’s a painkiller.”

Dan Simmons book Endymion

Source: Endymion (1996), Chapter 34 (p. 350)

“When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.”

Leo Tolstoy book What Men Live By

Source: What Men Live By (1881), Ch. XI

Love, Men, Children

“And you say, Oh my God, am I here all alone?”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Ballad of a Thin Man

“God tells us', wrote Equiano, 'that the oppressor and the oppressed are both in his hands. And if these are not the poor, the broken-hearted, the blind, the captive, the bruised which our Savior speaks of, who are they?' Down through the years, African-Americans have upheld the ideals of America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals. The rights of African-Americans were not the gift of those in authority. Those rights were granted by the author of life and regained by the persistence and courage of African-Americans themselves. Among those Americans was Phillis Wheatley, who was dragged from her home here in West Africa in 1761 at the age of 7. In my country she became a poet and the first noted black author in our nation's history. Phillis Wheatley said, 'In every human breast God has implanted a principle which we call love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance'. That deliverance was demanded by escaped slaves named Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, educators named Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DeBois and ministers of the Gospel named Leon Sullivan and Martin Luther King Jr.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

Love, Life, Truth, Age

“Is God happy with your music? You see God loves music. God invented music. But Satan has invented some ungodly music you shouldn't listen to. Someone asked me one time Hovind, do you know what you get when you get when you play country music backwards? I said, "No." You get your wife back, you get your dog back, your pickup truck back, and you get out of jail. God created them male and female. Did you know that God invented marriage and the family and sex? He invented the whole thing, and he wants it to be wonderful? So He put some rules down; boys don't touch the girls until you are married to them. Now if you don't want to touch them then stay away from me. I saw your kind at San Francisco. God put the rules down. He put the rules down, because he wants the best for you.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), Dinosaurs and the Bible

Love, Marriage, Happiness, Family

“Have any of these thoughts been my own? Look at me—my every move seems a desperate search for someone to blame, always someone else. I’ve made being a tool of a god an excuse, a justification for not thinking, for simply reacting. And others have died for it.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 15 (p. 446)

Search, Thinking

“If all are born and live for the express purpose of learning to know God, and if the knowledge of God, in so far as it fails to produce this effect, is fleeting and vain, it is clear that all those who do not direct the whole thoughts and actions of their lives to this end fail to fulfil the law of their being.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1, Chapter 3, p. 52
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Law, Knowledge, Learning

“As to Bonaparte, you know what my apprehensions always were, and I can not help thinking they are in a great degree verified. For though he may, and I hope he will, trounce the Austrians…yet it is impossible to deny that he has lost, or at least risqued the losing of an opportunity. Every man has his weak side, and I have always thought Bonaparte's was the thinking Austria more inclined to peace and more to be depended upon than She is. I hope to God he will not suffer from his errour.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Letter to R. Fitzpatrick (10 September 1800), quoted in L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (London: Penguin, 1997), p. 168.
1800s

Peace, Hope, Thinking, Suffering

“We humans have an implicit responsibility to the One Who gave us so much. We owe Him our worship, and obedience to His Law - that is why atheists hate Him so vehemently. Atheists want to be free from all moral or spiritual responsibilities, but their God-given conscience tells them deep down that they can't.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)

Hate, Law

“Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

Beauty

“The separation of races happened long before the Nationalist Government. God separated the races.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As prime minister to an Austrian journalist during a European tour, 3 September 1984, as cited in The Star, and Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, PW Botha in his own words, p. 24

“I feel awe of the gods, I love, I revere, I venerate them, and in short have precisely the same feelings towards them as one would have towards kind masters or teachers or fathers or guardians or any beings of that sort.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

"To the Cynic Heracleios" in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1913) edited by W. Heinemann, Vol. II, p. 93
General sources

Love, Feeling, Teachers

“Maulana Muhammad Ali wrote:… Some Mussulman friends have been constantly flinging at me the charge of being a… Gandhi-worshipper… Since I hold Islam to be the highest gift of God, therefore, I was impelled by the love I bear towards Mahatmaji to pray to God that he might illumine his soul with the true light of Islam… As a follower of Islam I am bound to regard the creed of Islam as superior to that professed by the followers of any non-Islamic religion. And in this sense, the creed of even a fallen and degraded Mussulman is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim irrespective of his high character, even though the person in question be Mahatma Gandhi himself”

Muhammad Ali (writer) (1874–1951) Pakistani scholar and leading figure of the Ahmadiyya Movement

Gandhi’s reaction was: “In my humble opinion the Maulana has proved the purity of his heart and his faith in his own religion by expressing his view. He merely compared two sets of religious principles and gave his opinion as to which was better” (Navajivan, 13.4.1924).
(Young India, 10.4.1924). Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 8

Love, Religion, Soul, Question

“Ethics must not remain a lovely abstraction; it must be concretized into valid truth. At this point ethics joins forces with religion because ethics too has ultimately no other recourse but to hypothesize the idea of God: not for the personal redemption of the moral individual but as a guarantee for the eventual realization of morality in this world.”

Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) German philosopher

Source: Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (1971), p. 122

Love, Truth, World, Religion

“We are going to become Gods, period. If you don't like it, get off. You don't have to contribute, you don't have to participate but if you are going to interfere with me becoming a God, you're going to have trouble. There'll be warfare.”

Richard Seed (1928) American physicist and entrepreneur

TechnoCalyps - Part II - Preparing for the Singularity (2008-11-14)

“We may be damned at last, by God or our consciences; and though I've met a good many people who profess to credit no God, I've never met one who believed he had no conscience—this though he could no more produce it for my inspection than I could point out the God he demanded to see.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Introduction for R. A. Lafferty, Episodes of the Argo (1990), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

People

“Don't be disheartened by the forces of evil. Nothing can happen that God hasn't allowed. Even resistance is all part of grand orchestration. The devil always has you right were God wants you.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 16

Evil, Parting

“Bunch a slack-jawed faggots around here. This stuff [Red Man chewing tobacco] will make you a god-damned sexual tyrannosaurus -- just like me.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

from Predator
Movies

“Dogs, to me, are like children. They are the closest thing to God. They are so pure in their love, and all they do is aim to please.”

Taraji P. Henson (1970) American actress

"Taraji P. Henson: Give Animals the Love That They Deserve" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_IPhbsMlow, video interview with PETA (27 February 2013).

Love, Children, Dogs

“Satan has got a plan; and God has got a plan. God's plan is to fill his creation with people who obey his laws, live in peace, use the preaching of his Word to win souls, and go to live with Him in Heaven. Satan's plan is to reduce the population to zero. He hates humanity, exactly the opposite of Christianity. He wants to promise secret knowledge so that: "you can learn something that nobody else knows." That's what all the lodges promise too, by the way - some kind of secret knowledge. Use the teaching of evolution to get people to accomplish his goals and have people go to hell forever. Satan wants to reduce the population. The Bible says, "All things were created by him, and for him." God made a beautiful planet, beautiful garden and said, "Hey, fill it with people." First thing he said to Adam, was a blessing. "Be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth." Go fill it up. It's a blessing. This is the first mention of the word, "blessing."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

"Blessed."
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Hate, People, Secret, Peace

“[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, “Who made me?” cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, “Who made God?””

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 2: Moral Influences in Early Youth. My Father's Character and Opinions.

World, Question

“Men possess virtues and We are ravished out of self by purified Love, even to the Face of God, freed and emptied of every event and illusion. This is the contemplative life of highest price. the Divine likeness in differing measure;
in greater or lesser degree have they found their own essence in the depth of themselves,
according to their dignity. But God fulfils all; and each, clearer or fainter, according to the measure of his love.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

An Anthology of Mysticism and Philosophy

Love, Life, Men

“The success of sainthood is the success attained by struggle and suffering and achieved by faith; a success of honor, of clean hands and pure heart, of service to man and glory to God.”

William Croswell Doane (1832–1913) American bishop

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 109.

Faith, Suffering, Success, Heart

“Mister Gladstone is an Englishman and a scholar. Had he walked by the side of that soldier, remembering Cromwell's Ironsides who trusted in God and kept their powder dry, and the old Continental militia, I think he would not have declared as he did that 'Jefferson Davis had created a nation', but he would rather have said, 'If Bunker Hill sends the first soldiers to this war, it is already decided. My lords and gentlemen, John Bull had better touch no American bonds which Bunker Hill does not endorse.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War, Thinking

“I render thanks and yield praise unto God for having been chosen by Him as the Exponent of His Cause in bygone days and in the days to come; there is none other God save Him, the Glorified, the All-Praised, the Ever-Abiding. Whatever is in the heavens and on the earth is His and through Him are we guided aright.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to the First Letter of the Living

“That the gods superintend all the affairs of men, and that there are such beings as dæmons.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Plato, 42.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 3: Plato

Men

“When streams of unkindness, as bitter as gall,
Bubble up from the heart to the tongue,
And Meekness is writhing in torment and thrall,
By the hands of Ingratitude wrung, —
In the heat of injustice, unwept and unfair,
While the anguish is festering yet,
None, none but an angel or God can declare
"I now can forgive and forget."”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Forgive and Forget, l. 1-8.
Ballads for the Times (1851)

Angels, Forgiveness, Heart, Forgetting

“O people! Your God is one and your forefather (Adam) is one. An Arab is not better than a non-Arab and a non-Arab is not better than an Arab, and a red (i. e. white tinged with red) person is not better than a black person and a black person is not better than a red person, except in piety.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated in Mosnad Ahmad, #22978
Sunni Hadith

People, Personality

“The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843), p. 102

Books, Faith, Religion

“Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.”

Pope Leo X (1475–1521) Pope from 1513 to 1521

Statement to his brother, Giuliano, as quoted in The Claims of Christianity (1894) by William Samuel Lilly, p. 191

“God has set up a high standard of righteousness. He has made plain a distinction between human and divine wisdom. All who work on Christ's side must work to save, not to destroy.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Medical Ministry (1932), p. 133

Wisdom, Christ

“And what happens then?
When?
After you're dead.
Dont nothing happen. You're dead.
You told me once you believed in God.
The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could.
What would you say to him?
Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: what's that? And then I'm goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together.
Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say?
The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it. I dont believe there is an answer.”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

page 258
Suttree (1979)

Smile, Thinking, Waiting, Parting

“Google’s more powerful than any government now – people think it’s God. They’re storing all our data and one day they’re going to turn against us.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Quote reprinted http://www.nme.com/photos/in-her-own-words-mias-20-sharpest-quotes/172930/16/4#11 in NME Sourced quotes

People, Thinking

“Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?”

Graham Greene book The Power and the Glory

The Power and the Glory (1940)

Life

“"Even if some details of dogma aren't true—or even all of 'em—think what a consolation religion and the church are to weak humanity!"
"Are they? I wonder! Don't cheerful agnostics, who know they are going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven—or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong—if God may not be a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they'll go to hell themselves. Consolation? No!"”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

Religion, Hell, Thinking, Dead

“In 1860, the South did not appeal to the right of revolution. They appealed to a right of secession, which they claim to be a Constitutional right under the Constitution itself. In 1776, the colonists did not claim that in breaking with Great Britain they were exercising a right granted by the British Constitution. They had conducted their struggle until that moment by appealing it through the British constitution. But when they decided on independence, they appealed instead to the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

Law, Exercises, Nature

“If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Men

“Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena.
Let us march on ballot boxes until the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs will be transformed into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Let us march on ballot boxes until the Wallaces of our nation tremble away in silence.
Let us march on ballot boxes until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress, men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.
Let us march on ballot boxes until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda.
Let us march on ballot boxes until all over Alabama God’s children will be able to walk the earth in decency and honor. There is nothing wrong with marching in this sense.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

Love, Men, Children, Fear

“Under the deeply moving impression of France's capitulation I congratulate you and all the German armed forces on the God-given prodigious victory with the words of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great of the year 1870: "What a turn of events through God's dispensation!" All German hearts are filled with the chorale of Leuthen, which the victors of [the Battle of] Leuthen, the soldiers of the Great King sang [in 1757]: Now thank we all our God!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Telegram to Hitler (19 June 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1261
1940s

Victory, Heart

“I think it is interesting that God designed people to need other people. We see those cigarette advertisements with the rugged cowboy riding around alone on a horse, and we think that is strength, when, really, it is like setting your soul down on a couch and not exercising it. The soul needs to interact with other people to be healthy.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

People, Exercises, Soul, Thinking

“Sometimes I can tell the greatness of my mission with God by the resistance I am met with by the Devil.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 144