Quotes about God
page 54

Michael Löwy photo
Hans Urs Von Balthasar photo

“In his Gospel, St. John, through long and deep contemplation, acknowledges Jesus to be the Logos of God. In his epistles he points entirely away from himself toward Christ. Finally, in the Apocalypse, in the vision of the Lamb of God, Old and New Testaments are united, and the whole drama of salvation is summed up.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Our Task https://books.google.it/books?id=yEjT5yVci2gC&pg=PT0, trans. John Saward, Ignatius Press, 1994.
Our Task: A Report and a Plan (1984)

Friedrich Kellner photo
James K. Morrow photo

“JOB. And now it’s time…
FRANNY. To curse God…
JOB. And live.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 46: The Soap Opera" p. 184 (originally published in Science Fiction Age, January 1994; ellipses in the original)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

Pentti Linkola photo
Alex Jones photo
Adelaide Anne Procter photo

“Sir king, I have been often accused of harbouring traitorous designs against you, but, as God in heaven is just and true, may this morsel of bread choke me if even in thought I have ever been false to you.”

Godwin, Earl of Wessex Anglo-Saxon nobleman; son of Wulfnoth Cild

The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon (trans. Thomas Forester), Book VI
Godwin supposedly said this just before he choked to death on a piece of bread at the table of King Edward "the Confessor", but the story is very doubtful.
Misattributed

James Carville photo

“Hurricane [Katrina] hit the Gulf Coast and destroyed much of the Gulf Coast — that was an act of God … Now what happened to New Orleans, that was a complete failure of the federal government. Complete negligence by the feds.”

James Carville (1944) political writer, consultant and United States Marine

in a speech to LSU students at the Manship School of Communications' Holliday Forum on January 27, 2006.

“The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: — they acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced in His will in all things.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 435.

Charles Baudelaire photo

“O wise among all Angels ordinate,
God foiled of glory, god betrayed by fate,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!
O Prince of Exile doomed to heinous wrong,
Who, vanquished, riseth ever stark and strong,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!
Thou knowest all, proud king of occult things,
Familiar healer of man's sufferings,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!
Thy love wakes thirst for Heaven in one and all:
Leper, pimp, outcast, fool and criminal,
Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!”

<p>Ô toi, le plus savant et le plus beau des Anges,
Dieu trahi par le sort et privé de louanges,</p><p>Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!</p><p>Ô Prince de l'exil, à qui l'on a fait tort
Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort,</p><p>Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!</p><p>Toi qui sais tout, grand roi des choses souterraines,
Guérisseur familier des angoisses humaines,</p><p>Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!</p><p>Toi qui, même aux lépreux, aux parias maudits,
Enseignes par l'amour le goût du Paradis,</p><p>Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!
"Les Litanies de Satan" [Litanies of Satan] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Litanies_de_Satan
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Louis Riel photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo

“If Christ is the wisdom of God and the power of God in the experience of those who trust and love Him, there needs no further argument of His divinity.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 58

John Hay photo

“The people will come to their own at last,—
God is not mocked forever.”

John Hay (1838–1905) American statesman, diplomat, author and journalist

"The Sphynx of the Tuileries", Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces (1873).

James Hamilton photo
John Calvin photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“The universe is God’s son.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“God’s Son,” p. 105
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Is It Possible to Write a Poem”

Harry Emerson Fosdick photo

“The Church offers comradeship with Jesus in all the affairs of life. It gives men a clearer understanding of the mind of Christ. It is through Christ that they come to know God. The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

Statement co-authored with Joseph Fort Newton and Charles E. Jefferson, edited by Charles Steltzle, as quoted in The American Scrap Book (1928), p. 15; also in Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches (1930), p. 85

T. B. Joshua photo

“The more they persecute me, the more the favour of God upon my life. The more they persecute me, the more God will increase my blessing.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the blessings in persecution - "Persecution Has Increased My Blessings – TB Joshua https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/1132/persecution-has-increased-my-blessings-tb-joshua.html Modern Ghana (September 17 2009)

Eino Leino photo
Roger Williams (theologian) photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
William Bradford photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Stephen Fry photo

“He takes coke and has slept with a prostitute - but he's a TV presenter for God's sake!”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

On the sacking of Angus Deayton from Have I Got News For You.
Quoted in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/stephen-fry-a-restless-soul-546925.html
2000s

H.L. Mencken photo

“Socialism is the theory that the desire of one man to get something he hasn’t got is more pleasing to a just God than the desire of some other man to keep what he has got.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 51
1910s

Bernard Cornwell photo
Jeremy Taylor photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Alan Hirsch photo
Sarah Palin photo

“…I know at the end of the day putting this in God’s hands, the right thing for America will be done, at the end of the day on Nov. 4.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/22/palin-god-will-do-the-right-thing-on-election-day/?
2014

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
James MacDonald photo
George Holmes Howison photo

“Before it can be said, then, that human freedom and the absolute definiteness of God as Supreme Reason are really reconciled, we must have found some way of harmonising the eternity of the human spirit with the creative and regenerative offices of God. The sense of their antagonism is nothing new. Confronted with the race-wide fact of human sin, the elder theology proclaimed this antagonism, and solved it by denying to man any but a temporal being; quite as the common-sense of the everyday Philistine, absorbed in the limitations of the sensory life, proclaims the mere finitude of man, and is stolid to the ideal considerations that suggest immortality and moral freedom, rating them as day-dreams beneath sober notice, because the price of their being real is the attributing to man nothing short of infinity. "We are finite! merely finite!" is the steadfast cry of the old theology and of the plodding common realist alike; and, sad to say, of most of historic philosophy too. And the old theology, with more penetrating consistency than the realistic ordinary man or the ordinary philosophy, went on to complete its vindication of the Divine Sovereignty from all human encroachment by denying the freedom of man altogether.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.330-1

William Drummond of Hawthornden photo

“God never had a church but there, men say,
The Devil a chapel hath raised by some wyles.
I doubted of this saw, till on a day
I westward spied great Edinburgh’s Saint Gyles.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

Posthumous Poems, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii, Section 4, Member 1, Subsection 1 .

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Johannes Grenzfurthner photo

“I think that Man in creating God somewhat overestimated his abilities.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

aphorism used in mRIF http://monochrom.at/mrif

Babe Ruth photo

“Yes, he's a prick, but he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit!”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

About Ty Cobb, a notoriously vicious player. Quoted in The Sporting News (12 July 1950); as actually published in The Sporting News, "prick" was replaced by "[censored]" — elsewhere, including Field of Screams: The Dark Underside of America's National Pastime (1994) the quote has appeared as "Ty Cobb is a prick." or sometimes "Cobb is a prick. But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit."

“If God wanted us to believe in him, he'd exist.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

"10 Funniest Londoners" http://www.timeout.com/london/comedy/features/2/2.html, TimeOut, 23rd June, 2005.

John Adams photo

“Thanks be to God, that he gave me Stubborness, when I know I am right.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Edmund Jenings, 27 September 1782 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-13-02-0217, also quoted in John Adams (2008) by David McCullough, p. 272
1780s

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi photo

“We are committed, in front of God, to the Egyptian and Arab people that we will protect Egypt, the Egyptians and their free will.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

-El-Sisi http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/10/07/egyptian-people-will-never-forget-who-stood-with-them-or-against-them-al-sisi/
2013

Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Agatha Christie photo
Albert Einstein photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Cecil Frances Alexander photo

“He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.”

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895) British hymn-writer and poet

Hymn: All things bright and beautiful http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/l/allthing.htm

Báb photo

“When human beings banish God from the world, they make Gods of themselves.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Other Quotes

Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“The homosexuals say they are for God. Now, who are we going to believe, God or the pervert?”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
John Byrom photo

“God bless the King! (I mean our faith's defender!)
God bless! (No harm in blessing) the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is King,
God bless us all! That's quite another thing!”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

Verse "Intended to allay the Violence of Party-Spirit"
Miscellaneous Poems (1773)

William McKinley photo

“Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth.”

William McKinley (1843–1901) American politician, 25th president of the United States (in office from 1897 to 1901)

Speech delivered at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York (September 5, 1901).
1900s

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Hilaire Belloc photo

“Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Speech to voters of South Salford (1906), quoted in Robert Speaight, The Life of Hilaire Belloc (London: Hollis & Carter, 1957), p. 204
Response to his Tory opponent's slogan, "Don't vote for a Frenchman and a Catholic". On polling day, 13 January 1906, Belloc, standing as a Liberal, overturned a Conservative majority to win by 852 votes, winning again four years later, though by an even slimmer margin.

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Farewell, p. 453
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“Why does God want us to let go of our dreams? Because anything you are unwilling to let go of is an idol, and you are in sin.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

Source: Me, Myself, & Bob (2006), p. 236

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“Christians in this country should start taking another fresher look at their doctrinal content in trying to assume they know the mandate of God.”

Comments on the government's proposed Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill, 2 August 2005

Georges Bernanos photo
James Eastland photo
Báb photo
Thomas Jackson photo

“Duty is ours; consequences are God's.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Though this was a favorite motto of Jackson, and reported as among his last words, it did not originate with him, and was used by others at least as early as in a speech by abolitionist John Jay (8 October 1856)
Misattributed

Rose Wilder Lane photo
Tanith Lee photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“Hermes:
Much must he toil who serves the Immortal Gods.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

D.H. Lawrence photo

“God is only a great imaginative experience.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, pt. 4, ed. by E. McDonald, (1936)

Albert Einstein photo

“Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. … This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God.”

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

'Essays in Science (1934) p. 11. Reprinted in Ideas and Opinions On Scientific Truth (1954) p. 261, Crown Publishers, Inc. New York, New York, USA, 1954, ISBN 0679601058.
1940s

Madonna photo

“Be strong, believe in freedom and in God, love yourself, understand your sexuality, have a sense of humor, masturbate, don't judge people by their religion, color or sexual habits, love life and your family.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

From The Great Rock 'N' Roll Quote Book http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/madonna_2.htm.

Ray Comfort photo

“I do admit to mocking atheists, because mockery is a legitimate form of debate according to my rule Book. God Himself mocks evil men who refuse His moral government”

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

see Proverbs 1:26-27
[Nothing Created Everything: The Scientific Impossibility of Atheistic Evolution, 2009-09-22, WorldNetDaily, Los Angeles, 9781935071235, 2009931567, 90, http://books.google.com/books?id=1wqMdLiV970C&pg=PA90]
edit of statement in * Cruelty and hatred
Atheist Central
2009-04-27
http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/2009/04/cruelty-and-hatred.html
2011-10-21

Glenn Beck photo
Stanley Spencer photo

“Do you know what good art is? It is saying "ta" to God.”

Stanley Spencer (1891–1959) English painter

As quoted in Times Thievish Progress (1970) by John Rothenstein; "ta" is a British form of "thank you."

Tom Wolfe photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“What preoccupies most scientists now is not how much they know compared to 50 years ago, though that is enormous as a difference, but how little they know compared to what they're finding out […] For a few milliseconds really of cosmic time our species has lived on one very very small rock, in a very small solar system that's a part of a fantastically unimportant suburb, in one of an uncountable number of galaxies […] Every single second since the big bang a star the size of our sun has blown up, gone to nothing […] And indeed physicists now exist who can tell you the date on which our sun will follow suit […] We know when it's [the world] coming to an end and we know how it will be, but we know something even more extraordinary which is the rate of expansion of this explosion we're looming through is actually speeding up. Our universe is flying apart further and faster than we thought it was […] Everyone who studies it professionally finds it impossible to reconcile this extraordinarily destructive, chaotic, self-destructive process, to find in it the finger of god, to find in that the idea of a design. And it's not just because we know so little about it, it's because what we know about it that's essential doesn't seem as if it's the intended result brought about by a divine-benign creator who loves every single one of us living as we do on this tiny rock in this negligible suburb of the cosmos.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=11m29s
2010s, 2010

Leo Tolstoy photo

“The Christianity of the first centuries recognized as productions of good art, only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers, and hymn-singing evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to follow his example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal enjoyment they considered to be bad, and therefore rejected … This was so among the Christians of the first centuries who accepted Christ teachings, if not quite in its true form, at least not yet in the perverted, paganized form in which it was accepted subsequently.
But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale conversion of whole nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of Constantine, Charlemagne and Vladimir, there appeared another, a Church Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ's teaching. And this Church Christianity … did not acknowledge the fundamental and essential positions of true Christianity — the direct relationship of each individual to the Father, the consequent brotherhood and equality of all people, and the substitution of humility and love in place of every kind of violence — but, on the contrary, having founded a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology, and having introduced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, but not only of these divinities themselves but of their images, it made blind faith in its ordinances an essential point of its teachings.
However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity, however degraded, not only in comparison with true Christianity, but even with the life-conception of the Romans such as Julian and others, it was for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and on the basis of that religion the art of the time was assessed. And art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints, and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear of torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was considered good; all art opposed to this was considered bad.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Yasser Harrak photo

“It is an irony to see in some Muslim societies someone who curses God, in his daily slang when angry, go out and protest against the Danish cartoons about the Prophet.”

Yasser Harrak Canadian liberal writer, columnist and human rights activist

Yasser Harrak. 2010. "Origins of Insluting Islam in the Sunna and in Muslim societies". Annabaa Information Network. Accessed January 20, 2010. http://annabaa.org/nbanews/2010/05/243.htm

Joseph Heller photo

“All the people who are hating me right now and are here waiting to see me die, when you wake up in the morning you aren't going to feel any different. You are going to hate me as much tomorrow as you do tonight.
Reach out to God and he will hear you. Let him touch your hearts. Don't hate all your lives.”

Sean Sellers (1969–1999) American murderer

Final statement before his execution (5 February 1999), quoted in "Man Who Killed 3 as Teen Is Among Pair Executed" in Los Angeles Times (5 February 1999) http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/05/news/mn-5135.

Eugéne Ionesco photo
Max Scheler photo

“"Among the types of human activity which have always played a role in history, the soldier is least subject to ressentiment. Nietzsche is right in pointing out that the priest is most exposed to this danger, though the conclusions about religious morality which he draws from this insight are inadmissible. It is true that the very requirements of his profession, quite apart from his individual or national temperament, expose the priest more than any other human type to the creeping poison of ressentiment. In principle he is not supported by secular power; indeed he affirms the fundamental weakness of such power. Yet, as the representative of a concrete institution, he is to be sharply distinguished from the homo religiosus—he is placed in the middle of party struggle. More than any other man, he is condemned to control his emotions (revenge, wrath, hatred) at least outwardly, for he must always represent the image and principle of “peacefulness.” The typical “priestly policy” of gaining victories through suffering rather than combat, or through the counterforces which the sight of the priest's suffering produces in men who believe that he unites them with God, is inspired by ressentiment. There is no trace of ressentiment in genuine martyrdom; only the false martyrdom of priestly policy is guided by it. This danger is completely avoided only when priest and homo religiosus coincide."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Kurien Kunnumpuram photo
Lorenzo Snow photo

“As man now is, God once was:
As God now is, man may be.”

Lorenzo Snow (1814–1901) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Nature of God (see also: God in Mormonism)
http://lds.org/ensign/1982/02/i-have-a-question/i-have-a-question?lang=eng
Is President Lorenzo Snow’s oft-repeated statement—“As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be”—accepted as official doctrine by the Church?
I Have a Question
Lund, Gerald N.
February
1982
Ensign

Phil Ochs photo

“God isn't dead — he's just missing in action.”

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) American protest singer and songwriter

Source: The Broadside Tapes 1 (made in the 1960s; published c. 1980), Liner notes

Sun Myung Moon photo
Steve Hilton photo

“To be in politics is to be misjudged. But the moment I flourish the axe, murder the hog, look at the brains of the hog sloshing around in the bucket, I anoint my face with the blood, the offal, and I give out a mighty cry to the Gods upon Olympus.”

Steve Hilton (1969) British political consultant

Said after Hilton threatens to 'murder the hog', as quoted in "Hilton threatens to 'murder the hog'" http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,1962285,00.html, The Guardian, October 22, 2011

J. B. S. Haldane photo
François Fénelon photo

“Joy is an outward sign of inward faith in the promises of God.”

Tommy Newberry American writer

The 4:8 Principle.
The 4:8 Principle (2007)

Samuel Butler photo

“God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

"Rebelliousness", Note-Books (1912)

Richard Powers photo