Quotes about God
page 62

“As the story unfolds it is at 55 Dropsie Avenue where Frimme Hersh deals with God; where the street singer fails to grasp his chance for gory. It is on Dropsie Avenue where a diminutive enemy defeats the super, and Willie comes of age. It is in an alley of Dropsie Avenue where Jacob Shtarkah tries to find the meaning of life. It is also on Dropsie Avenue, finally, where I undertake the biography of the street itself, through the physical evolution of the block, the rise and fall of the tenement building at No.55 and the ethnic and social changes of the stream of occupants.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XIV-XV, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

Life, Age, Change, Chance

“There is nothing that God has judged good for us that He has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 261
Undated

World, Nature

“She needed help, but God was in a meeting whenever she rang.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Help

“The great difficulty in forming legitimate governments is in persuading those forming the governments that those who are to be their fellow citizens are equal to them in the rights, which their common government is to protect. Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth-century Europe looked upon each other as less than human, and slaughtered each other without pity and without compunction. It was impossible for there to be a common citizenship of those who did not look upon each other as possessing the same right of conscience. How one ought to worship God cannot be settled by majority rule. A majority of one faith cannot ask a minority of another faith to submit their differences to a vote. George Washington, in 1793, said that our governments were not formed in the gloomy ages of ignorance and superstition, but at a time when the rights of man were better understood than in any previous age. Washington was right, in that such rights were, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, in America, better understood. But they were not perfectly understood, as the continued existence of chattel slavery attests. A difference concerning the equal rights of persons of color made the continued existence of a common government of all Americans impossible. A great civil war had to be fought, ending the existence of slavery, reuniting the nation and rededicating it to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

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

2000s, The Central Idea (2006)

Men, War, Age, Faith

“A general problem with much of Western theology… is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less a universe.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

World, Problem, Universe

“Praise consists in the love of God, in wonder at the goodness of God, in recognition of the gifts of God, in seeing God in all things He gives us, ay, and even in the things that He refuses to us; so as to see our whole life in the light of God; and seeing this, to bless Him, adore Him, and glorify Him.”

Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) English Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 456.

Love, Life, Light

“Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Beauty

“The number of ways of passing between the traditional two fixed points of man’s life, that is to say, of passing from the self to God, is fixed only by the limitations of space, which is limitless. The eternal philosopher is the eternal pilgrim on that road. It is difficult to take him seriously when he relies on the evidence of the teeth, the throat and the bowels. Yet in the one poem that is unimpeachably divine, the poem of the ascent into heaven, it is possible to say that there can be no faults, since it is precisely the faults of life this poem enables us to leave behind. If the idea of God is the ultimate poetic idea, then the idea of the ascent into heaven is only a little below it.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

“A Collect of Philosophy”
Opus Posthumous (1955)

Life, Way, Idea

“You want calamities? What about the Ice Age? … God made this world, but didn't complete it.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

As quoted in "Analysis : Tragedies of nature, terror leave vulnerable feeling" by Charles Passy, in The Palm Beach Post (12 September 2005) http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbccentral/content/local_news/epaper/2005/09/12/m1a_vulnerability_0912.html

Age, World

“God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Songs of Travel and Other Verses

No. XXV, If This Were Faith.
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)

“Under the benignant providence of Almighty God the representatives of the States and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good. The gratitude of the nation to the sovereign arbiter of all human events should be commensurate with the boundless blessings which we enjoy.
Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world.”

James K. Polk (1795–1849) American politician, 11th President of the United States (in office from 1845 to 1849)

Fourth Annual Message to Congress (5 December 1848) http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(sj0404)).

People, World, Peace, Country

“I'm just afraid that I may not have the strength to do this job. After you leave me tonight, Jimmy, I am going to pray. I am going to pray that God will help me, that he will give me the strength and the guidance to do this job and to do it right. I hope that you will pray for me, too, Jimmy.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Talking to his son James http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/11/04/fear_and_strength.html on the night of his landslide victory over Herbert Hoover (8 November 1932), as quoted in Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008) by H. W. Brands 1930s

Hope, Help

“God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Interview With The Vampire (1976)

Angels, Hell

“That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error.”

Pope Gregory VII Pope from 1073 to 1085

In response to the request made in 1079 by Vratislaus, duke of Bohemia, seeking permission to use Slavonic in local church services.
Awake! magazine December 2011, page 7; They Tried to Keep God’s Word From the Masses.

People, Error, Intelligence

“There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth — yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, This Side of Paradise (1920)

Love, Life, Pain, Youth

“In the course of time one does not feel even the existence of God. After attaining enlightenment one sees that gods and deities are all Maya.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 297]

Feeling, Time

“All the time each one of us is hovering above an unfathomable abyss of potential calamities of every kind - sensed in that ever-throbbing pulse deep down in one's heart; as long as this chasm does not open up to devour one, the floating island in any guise whatever must surely be welcome. Wrong notion of God? Asiatic pessimism?”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

Sense, Time, Heart

“God draws no distinction between Himself and us. God opens up the union of the very godhead (Trinity), and brings us into it.”

Paul Crouch (1934–2013) American broadcster

Praise-a-thon TBN (November 1990) http://www.bereanfaith.com/heresy.php?action=aquote&id=2

Drawing

“God gives every animal the means of saving its life—why object if he gives astrology to the astronomer?”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Vol. VIII, p. 705
Joannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia, ed. Christian Frisch (1858)

Life, Animals

“When Hitler was fighting for power, he published a program of his Nazi Party. There, in the article 24, it was declared: "We are all for ‘positive Christianity’." Many genuine Christians got hooked for it. But when Hitler finally had acquired the full power in the country, it was suddenly disclosed what many had overlooked: The Positive Christianity was just disguised Nazism. At the same time, the fight against the Bible triggered its ramp. Especially the Old Testament was taken under the heavy attack. Everywhere you could hear and read: Well, the New Testament can be allowed to circulate for some time, because the teaching there in is about the God of love. Just one thing, the letters of Jew Paul must be eliminated from there, they smack too much of the Spirit of the Old Testament. As for the Old Testament itself - oh, that’s a terrible book, a dirty book, a horrifying book! There in, a voice of the Judeo-Syrian God of desert and revenge can be heard!”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Testimony By Verdun, p. 100
Wilhelm Busch erzählt: Als Hitler um die Macht kämpfte, veröffentlichte er ein Parteiprogramm. In dem stand als Punkt 24: “Wir sind für positives Christentum.” Viele treue Christen sind darauf hereingefallen. Als aber Hitler an der Macht war, erfuhr man, was viele vorausgesehen hatten: Positives Christentum ist dasselbe wie Nationalsozialismus. Zu gleicher Zeit begann der Kampf gegen die Bibel. Namentlich das Alte Testament wurde unter Trommelfeuer genommen. Überall konnte man hören und lesen: Nun ja, das Neue Testament könne man noch einige Zeit gelten lassen; denn da werde der Gott der Liebe gelehrt. Nur die Briefe des Juden Paulus müsse man ausmerzen. In denen sei der Geist des Alten Testaments zu spüren. Das Alte Testament aber – oh, das sei ein fürchterliches Buch, ein schmutziges Buch, ein grauenvolles Buch! Da rede der jüdisch-syrische Wüsten-Rache-Gott. (German)
Testimony By Verdun

Love, Books, Revenge, Time

“For God's sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Letter to Coleridge (August 6, 1800)

Heart

“I don’t believe in God and all that. But I am Jewish, and very proud to be so, very proud of the culture.”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

From an interview with Sam Wollaston in The Guardian, 25th March 2009.

“Oh, rejoice, the Cleansing of my lips… rejoice, Salvation of my soul!
I still have a thousand half-loves… oh, my God!
I want to shoot myself just thinking about it!
And you think I don't mean what I say?”

Aaron Weiss

Seven Sisters.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Love, Soul, Thinking

“I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change wound have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM."”

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

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Life, World, Problem, Thinking

“We may be sure that it is the love of God only that can make us come out of self. If His powerful hand did not sustain us, we should not know how to take the first step in that direction.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 270.

Love

“God's very service is wages; His ways are strewed with roses, and paved with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, and with peace that passeth understanding.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 127.

Peace, Way, Understanding, Joy

““William will marry eventually,” he said in a quieter tone. He’ll try to have children—he doesn’t believe any of this.”
“Not even in God,” said Maria sadly, shaking her head, “who is our only hope.”
“And an unhelpfully remote and theoretical hope, at that,” Gabriel snapped.”

Tim Powers (1952) American writer

Part 1, Chapter 4 (p. 80)
Hide Me Among the Graves (2012)

Children, Hope

“[Akbar is reported to have said:] “My dear child… with all of God’s creatures, I am at peace; why should I permit myself, under any consideration, to be the cause of molestation or aggression to any one? Besides, are not five parts in six of mankind either Hindus or aliens to the faith; and were I to be governed by motives of the kind suggested in your inquiry, what alternative can I have but to put them all to death? I have thought it therefore my wisest plan to let these men alone.””

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

Tarikh-i-Salim Shahi (Calcutta Edition), pp. 21-22. (Some scholars hold that this work is a fabrication and does not comprise the real Memoirs of Jahangir) quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they.

Death, Men, Peace, Faith

“They're not going to teach science at all. What they do is take the science students down to the lake, tie them in burlap sacks and throw them in. If God thinks they're good science students, they float.”

Paula Poundstone (1959) American comedian

About science education in the state of Kansas; quoted in [Randi, James, James Randi, November 11, 2006, http://www.randi.org/jr/2006-11/111706rampa.html#i7, "A Sure Test", Swift, James Randi Educational Foundation, 2006-11-18]

Thinking, Science

““The practice of employing images as ornaments and memorials to decorate the temple of the Lord is in a most especial manner approved by the Word of God himself. Moses was commanded to place two cherubim upon the ark, and to set up a brazen figure of the fiery serpent, that those of the murmuring Israelites who had been bitten might recover from the poison of their wounds by looking on the image. In the description of Solomon's temple, we read of that prince, not only that he made in the oracle two cherubim of olive tree, of ten 83 Vide supra, p. 17. 101 cubits in height, but that ‘all the walls of the temple round about he carved with divers figures and carvings.’ “In the first book of Paralipomenon (Chronicles) we observe that when David imposed his injunction upon Solomon to realise his intention of building a house to the Lord, he delivered to him a description of the porch and temple, and concluded by thus assuring him: ‘All these things came to me written by the hand of the Lord, that I may understand the works of the pattern.’ “The isolated fact that images were not only directed by the Almighty God to be placed in the Mosaic tabernacle, and in the more sumptuous temple of Jerusalem, but that [132] he himself exhibited the pattern of them, will be alone sufficient to authorise the practice of the Catholic Church in regard to a similar observance.”—(Hierurgia, p. 371.) All this may be briefly answered. There was no representation of the Jewish patriarchs or saints either in the tabernacle or in the temple of Solomon, as is the case with the Christian saints in the Roman Catholic and Græco-Russian Churches; and the brazen serpent, to which the author alludes, was broken into pieces by order of King Hezekiah as soon as the Israelites began to worship it.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), pp. 100-101

Books, Understanding, Tree, Memory

“And so, in calm expectation of a blessed future and a finished work which will explain the past, in honest submission of out way to God, in supreme delight in Him who is the gladness of our joy, the secret of tranquillity will be ours.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 448.

Secret, Way, Past, Future

“Murphy said, 'Constants aren't', and Murphy was apparently one of the gods of this universe.”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

Wizard's Bane (1989)

Universe

“Religious ideas, supposedly private matters between man and god, are in practice always political ideas.”

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

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

Idea

“You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is.. God help him.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

(288) Amir
The Kite Runner (2003)

Help

“While in England, I came across Sunday school material produced by a major Christian organization. Many conservative evangelical churches use it. One series of lessons covered the topic of origins. I was dismayed when the text declared that people need to believe in billions of years and evolution. But I was even more shocked when I read that the apostle Paul didn't understand science back in his time as we understand it today. Therefore, they concluded, what Paul wrote was not meant to answer questions about man's origins for today's world! What a low view of Scripture! They're looking on Paul's writings as the writings of a fallible human. But every word in the Bible was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit - it's the Word of God who knows everything!”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Did Eve really have an Extra Rib?: And other tough questions about the Bible (2002)

People, World, School, Understanding

“Cosmao’s … thesis is that societies obey two “sociological laws,” … according to which, when left to their own inertia, they “structure inequality” and “fabricate gods that become their masters.” God’s revelation in Jesus Christ expressly contradicts these two laws and should produce equality and destroy false gods. [Cosmao] contends, however, that Christianity has taken on the role of a “civil religion” and has thus become Christendom.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 134

Religion, Law, Christ, Falseness

“God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he’s not the one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot... You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that’s where He is.”

Paul Farmer (1959) American anthropologist

quoted on page 79.
Mountains Beyond Mountains

Suffering, Christ, Fight

“Only gods-damned fools die for lines drawn on maps.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 11 “All Else, Truth” section 5 (p. 513)

Fools

“Thanks be to God," says the Admiral; "the air is soft as in April in Seville, and it is a pleasure to be in it, so fragrant it is.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

8 October 1492
Journal of the First Voyage

Pleasure

“He will bless God, and love England ever after”

James Howell (1594–1666) Anglo-Welsh historian and writer

Instructions for Forraine Travel(1642, 1650)

Love

“And do you believe in God?"
"I do."
"But you didn't think a robot would, right?”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

"Right."
"The Inquest" in More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (1983)

Thinking

“Everything's funny for God's sake. Everything.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.s-t.com (July 5, 1996)
2007, 2008

“The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies God in us.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Pt. 4, ch. 10
De l’Allemagne [Germany] (1813)

Sense

“There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 264.

“My most recent faith struggle is not one of intellect. I don't really do that anymore. Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don't believe in God and they can prove He doesn't exist, and some other guys who can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it's about who is smarter, and honestly, I don't care.”

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

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Faith, Guy, Time

“What deserves to be called mysticism—not in the vague sense of the history and philosophy of religion, but rather in the Catholic-ecclesial sense—occurs when God's Word is heard, not only with exegetical and theological understanding, but with the whole heart, the whole being, when one is steadfast before the self-disclosure of the heart of God despite fire and night.”

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

First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr (1968)

Religion, History, Understanding, Sense

“It is the grandeur of Christ's character which constitutes the chief power of His ministry, not His miracles or teachings apart from. His character. The greatest truth of the gospel is Christ Himself — a human body become the organ of the Divine nature, and revealing, under the conditions of an earthly life, the glory of God.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 60.

Life, Truth, Nature, Christ

“I rather doubt if man really has much to gain by substituting peace for strife, as you and Jesus Christ recommend. Sic notus Ulixes? do you think you can outwit the resourceful malevolence of Nature? God is not mocked, as St. Paul long ago warned the Galatians. When man gets rid of a great trouble he is easier for a while, but not for long: Nature instantly sets to work to weaken his power of sustaining trouble, and very soon seven pounds is as heavy as fourteen pounds used to be. Last Easter Monday a young woman threw herself in the Lea because her dress looked so shabby amongst the holiday crowd: in other times and countries women have been ravished by half-a-dozen dragoons and taken it less to heart. It looks to me as if the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"Letter to Gilbert Murray" (April 23, 1900).

Women, Peace, Nature, Thinking

“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.”

Hyman George Rickover (1900–1986) United States admiral

As quoted in The New York Times (3 November 1986)

Forgiveness

“We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Appendix
1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)

Women, Men, Religion, Soul

“The Army of the Revolution is recruited by the Soldiers of Despair. Therefore, down with any Scheme which gives men Hope. In so far as it succeeds it curtails our recruiting ground and reinforces the ranks of our Enemies. Such opposition is to be counted upon, and to be utilised as the best of all tributes to the value of our work. Those who thus count upon violence and bloodshed are too few to hinder, and their opposition will merely add to the momentum with which I hope and believe this Scheme will ultimately be enabled to surmount all dissent, and achieve, with the blessing of God, that measure of success with which I verily believe it to be charged.”

William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher

In Darkest England : And The Way Out (1890), p. 81

Men, Hope, Success, Despair

“People are always asking, does God exist? Of course she does. The real question: what is she like?”

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 4 (p. 69)

People, Question

“I don't think God bargains.”

P. D. James book The Children of Men

The Children of Men (1992)

Thinking

“Any man, to the extent to which he is good, reveals the nature of God.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.38

Nature

“God deserves more love than the world gives him. Men, too, need more love than they receive from the world. Our community wants to take her place where these two needs meet.”

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

Our Task: A Report and a Plan (1984)

Love, Men, World, Communication

“Even if they had been real gods, what did it matter? What was it to me? Here I was still, right where I was born a thousand or so years before, in the middle of the human condition—namely, rubbish and pain. If the gods were real, their only relationship with us was to use us to play their games. Screw them all.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 8 (p. 174)

Pain, Game

“I cannot see why we should expect an infinite God to do better in another world than he does in this. If he allows injustice to prevail here, why will he not allow the same thing in the world to come?”

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

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

World

“If the Republican party shall fail to carry out this purpose, God will raise up another party that will be faithful.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Faith

“And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw —
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley The Masque of Anarchy

St. 9
The Masque of Anarchy (1819)

Law

“Is there not therefore rational necessity, but vital anguish that impels us to believe in God. And to believe in God — I must reiterate it yet again — is, before all and above all, to feel a hunger for God, a hunger for divinity, to be sensible to his lack and absence, to wish that God may exist. And it is the wish to save the human finality of the Universe. For one might even come to resign oneself to being absorbed by God, if it be that our consciousness is based upon Consciousness, if consciousness is the end of the Universe.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God

Hunger, Feeling, Universe

“I guess God has the last laugh. From up on high he lets us kill. And his people die for their faith. And we call it triumph of the will.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

Visit From The Dead Dog

People, Faith

“Who is Guru? The highest manifestation of God is Guru. So when Guru is here, God is here, to whom will you give your devotion? I want that the general should sign some papers. I need not go to his office when he is sitting in my home. Is it necessary to go in his office when his is sitting in my home? When God has come here, then what is the need to give devotion to God there?”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

(responding to a question about the word guru), Alta Loma Terrace Satsang, 1971 - reproduced from Elan Vital magazine, vol. II, issue 1
1970s

Home

“I need more than a bedtime story, I need more than a youth group God. I am looking for a savior. A guide. An existential answer to my questions about purpose and meaning. I want true fulfillment in my Christian faith. I am looking for joy.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Youth, Faith, Question, Joy

“The foundation in which the Bill was introduced was for the Government to offer a political solution that was legally binding, because if the Government had not introduced the Unity Bill, the investigations will never end. Trial after trial and the list goes on. About 2500 people have been investigated. Those who turned up in Parliament was close to 20,000 people. I mean, if 10,000 to 20,000 people are going to be investigated, God knows when it will end.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

8 July 2005
Additional remarks about the proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission

People

“Hold your tongue; you won't understand anything. If there is no God, then I am God.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Kirilov, Part III, Ch. VI, "A busy night"
The Possessed (1872)

Understanding

“Peace before everything, God before anything / Love before anything, real before everything / Home before anyplace, truth before anything / Style and stay radiate, love power slay the hate”

Mos Def (1973) American rapper and actor

From "Priority"
Album The Ecstatic

Love, Hate, Truth, Peace

“It’s been well said—and by many people in many circumstances—that whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. These people in the Deep South were mad because they could have elected Douglas, and Douglas would have given them everything they wanted—everything that they wanted that was consistent with his election in the free states.”

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

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

People, Madness

“There is rest in this world nowhere except in Christ, the manifested love of God. Trust in excellence, and the better you become, the keener is the feeling of deficiency. Wrap up all in doubt, and there is a stern voice that will thunder at last out of the wilderness upon your dream.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 517.

Love, World, Dreams, Feeling

“I suspect we would be wise,” he said without looking up, “to avoid declaring what God will or will not allow.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 12 (p. 194)

“Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;—till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;—is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honor such a man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“Josh (footage): Y'all ready to see Foo Fighters?
Nick Oliveri (footage): God damn, I thought they were here to see us!
Josh (footage): Well, I thought they were too! Well, not yet. You got a minute, you're a little early.
Troy Van Leeuwen: Sorry I'm late, I was just getting beer.
Josh: But they were early.
Josh (footage): Oh yeah… I'll see you all wherever you are. Uhhhh…
Josh: No, I'm not high there. Not at all.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

Over the Years and Through the Woods, ("How to Handle a Rope") commentary footage (2005)
Over the Years and Through the Woods

Beer

“God knows, it is as much as I can do to put meat and bread on my own table; & hourly some poor starving wretch comes to my door, to put in his claim for a part of it.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to Thomas Poole (23 March 1801)
Letters

Parting

“Time has been called God's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. In the same spirit, noise is Nature's way of making sure that we don't find out everything that happens. Noise, in short, is the protector of information.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

von Baeyer did not originate the quip about time, which dates back at least as far as the 1929 book "The Man Who Mastered Time" by Ray Cummings, where it appears on p. 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=YdZEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22everything+from+happening+at+once%22#search_anchor. Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 14, Noise, Nuisance and necessity, p. 127-128

Way, Nature, Time

“No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

The Epitaph, St. 3 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751) Variant: No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.

Hope, Drawing

“I entreat you to devote one solemn hour of thought to a crucified Saviour — a Saviour expiring in the bitterest agony. Think of the cross, the nails, the open wounds, the anguish of His soul. Think how the Son of God became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that you might live forever. Think as you lie down upon your bed to rest, how your Saviour was lifted up from the earth to die. Think amid your plans and anticipations of future gaiety, what the redemption of your soul has cost, and how the dying Saviour would wish you to act. His wounds plead that you will live for better things.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 72.

Lie, Soul, Thinking, Future

“I believe God's system is the best! He made kids able to get married & have children at 12, 13 & 14, & if you ask me, He must have known that was the best age, because then they could kind of grow up with their own kids.”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

Child Brides!

Children, Age

“And Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t believe in God, how in the world are we gonna let Bernie, I mean, really! Listen, Bernie gotta get saved, He gotta meet Jesus, I don’t know. He gotta, he gotta have a comin’ to Jesus meeting.”

Mark Burns (televangelist) (1979) Christian pastor and founder of the NOW Television Network

On Bernie Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a major party nominating contest https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/344148/pro-trump-pastor-backtracks-on-claim-that-bernie-sanders-gotta-meet-jesus/

World

“God! that this Earth should be so beautiful,
And yet so wretched!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(28th April 1824) Moonlight. T. C. Hofland.
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Beauty

“Only by presupposing God's prior and inconceivable forgiveness can the limitations of human good will be transcended, and only thus can the danger of human pride be avoided.”

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

Love Alone Is Credible (1963)

Forgiveness

“Let me first say that there are ongoing legal proceedings, so I am limited in my ability to speak about those issues. But I’m fully aware that there is a tendency in all of us, as a society, to romanticize people and their families, especially when their work is bigger than themselves. At the risk of sounding cliché, you can’t have rainbows without rain, or roses without thorns. It’s unrealistic for people to have great expectations of us and not allow for basic human normalcy. Our conflicts are reflective of our humanity. We are a family like all others and subject to the same struggles and unfortunate consequences with which all God’s people contend.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Statements during interview with The Root (24 June 2014) http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/06/the_root_interviews_bernice_a_king.html

People, Family

“An extreme, unconditional human yearning was expressed for the first time by Nietzsche independently of moral goals or of serving God. … Ardor that doesn’t address a dramatically articulated moral obligation is a paradox. … If we stop looking at states of ardor as simply preliminary to other and subsequent conditions grasped as beneficial, the state I propose seems a pure play of lightning, merely an empty consummation. Lacking any relation to material benefits such as power or the growth of the state (or of God or a Church or a party), this consuming can’t even be comprehended. … I’ll have to face the same difficulties as Nietzsche—putting God and the good behind him, though all ablaze with the ardor possessed by those who lay down their lives for God or the good. … I’ll admit that moral investigations that aim to surpass the good lead first of all to disorder.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), pp. xx-xxii

Time

“Christianity struck at the root of pagan tolerance of illusion. In claiming that there is only one true faith, it gave truth a supreme value it had not had before. It also made disbelief in the divine possible for the first time. The long-delayed consequence of Christian faith was an idolatry of truth that found its most complete expression in atheism. If we live in a world without gods, we have Christianity to thank for it.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Atheism, the last consequence of Christianit (p. 127)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Truth, World, Faith, Time

“Something inhuman has come to Tarker's Mills, as unseen as the full moon riding the night sky high above. It is the Werewolf, and there is no more reason for its coming now than there would be for the arrival of cancer, or a psychotic with murder on his mind, or a killer tornado. Its time is now, its place is here, in this little Maine town where baked bean church suppers are a weekly event, where small boys and girls still bring apples to their teachers, where the Nature Outings of the Senior Citizen's Club are religiously reported in the weekly paper. Next week there will be news of a darker variety.
Outside, its tracks begin to fill up with snow, and the shriek of the wind seems savage with pleasure. There is nothing of God or Light in that heartless sound—it is all black winter and dark ice.
The cycle of the Werewolf has begun.”

Stephen King book Cycle of the Werewolf

January
Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)

Pleasure, Girl, Boy, Nature

“I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradation and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 5
1900s - 1920s

Pleasure, World, Painting

“Thou lovest like an infinite God when Thou lovest; Thou movest heaven and earth to save Thy loved ones. Thou becomest man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with reproaches, dying with infamy and under the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much for an infinite love.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 271.

Love, Men

“"From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people." [20]”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

citation needed

People

“God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith (Ignatius Press; Sew edition (September 1, 2015)) by Cardinal Robert Sarah (Author), Nicolas Diat (Author) ISBN 978-1621640509”

Robert Sarah (1945) Roman Catholic bishop

Books

Faith

“It is God’s will that I see myself as much bound to Him in love as if He had done for me all that He hath done; and thus should every soul think inwardly of its Lover. That is to say, the Charity of God maketh in us such a unity that, when it is truly seen, no man can part himself from other.”

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

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 65

Love, Soul, Lovers, Thinking

“I think God is as much a basic ingredient in the universe as neutrons and positrons... God is, for lack of a better term, clout. This is the prime force, when we look around the universe.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

" Teaching Toward the 24th Century: Star Trek as Social Curriculum https://books.google.com/books?isbn=113558088X", Karen Anijar, 2004, p.38; quoted in Sweeney, 1995:8

Thinking, Universe

“Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

This is a misquotation of a prayer from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (ministry should be industry and arrogance should be arrogancy). This was a revision from an earlier edition. The original form, written by George Lyman Locke, appeared in the 1885 edition. In 1994 William J. Federer attributed it to Jefferson in America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations, pp. 327-8. See the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/national-prayer-peace. Misattributed

Wisdom, People, Peace, Justice

“To will what God doth will, that is the only science
That gives us any rest.”

François de Malherbe (1555–1628) (1555–1628) French poet, critic, and translator

Consolation, Stanza 7. Longfellow's translation.

Science

“Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God know where we're heading
Oh, make me wanna holler
They don't understand.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).
Song lyrics, What's Going On (1971)

Happiness, Understanding

“But, O ye Gods! and thou, whom gods obey,
Great Jove! with pity listen as I pray!
Respect the monarch's and the father's prayer!
If Pallas' safety be your heavenly care;
If to infold him in these arms again
I live, for life I sue with all its pain.
But if some dreadful fortune be design'd,
Now, now, while hope still soothes my cheated mind;
Ere yet the future shall its fates unfold;
While thus my son, my last, sole joy, I hold;
O! break life's chain at once, and let me go,
By darkness shrouded, from the death of woe!”

Charles Symmons (1749–1826) Welsh poet

Book VIII, lines 728–739
The Æneis (1817)

Life, Death, Pain, Fate

“The immediacy of falling in love recognizes but one immediacy that is ebenburtig (of equal standing), and this is a religious immediacy; falling in love is too virginal to recognize any confidant other than God. But the religious is a new immediacy, has reflection in between-otherwise, paganism would actually be religious and Christianity not. That the religious is a new immediacy every person easily understands who is satisfied with following the honest path of ordinary common sense. And although I imagine I have but few readers, I confess nevertheless that I do imagine my readers to be among these, since I am far from wanting to instruct the admired ones, who make systematic discoveries a la Niels Klim, who have left their good skin in order to put on the “real appearance.””

Sören Kierkegaard book Stages on Life's Way

Stages on Life's Way, p. 161-162
1840s, Stages on Life's Way (1845)

Love, Confidence, Imagination, Understanding

“In heav'n, the saint nor pity feels, nor care,
For those thus sentenced - pity might disturb
The delicate sense and most divine repose
Of spiritus angelical
Blessed be God,
The measure of his judgments is not fixed
By man's erroneous standard. He discerns
No such inordinate difference and vast
Betwixt the sinner and the saint, to doom
Such disproportion'd fates.
Compared with him,
No man on earth is holy called: they best
Stand in his sight approved, who at his feet
Their little crowns of virtue cast, and yield,
To him of his own works the praise, his due.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Composed at midnight, as quoted in The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb, p. 72.

Fate, Angels, Feeling, Sense

“The atheist believes the (Schlitz) beer commercial, which tells us to “Go for the gusto since we only go around once!” Now, I submit that’s a patently false view of ethics. If there is no God then Mr. Zindler is absolutely right—just live for total self-interest. There is no objective right and wrong. Nobody holds you accountable so just go for all the gusto you can get. Now, of course, you have to be rather careful about this because if you just pursue your unbridled lusts you may hurt other people and they, in turn, may try to get you back and diminish your gusto.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

William Lane Craig vs. Frank Zindler, Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, Illinois, – 1993 http://www.reasonablefaith.org/craig-zindler-debate-atheism-vs-christianity#ixzz4dymHVIhThttp://www.reasonablefaith.org/craig-zindler-debate-atheism-vs-christianity#ixzz4dylSxmsP

People, Beer, Hurt, Falseness

“God knows, I'm no the thing I should be,
Nor am I even the thing I could be.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

To The Reverend John M'Math, st. 8
Posthumous Pieces (1799)

“Today we know not only that there is a terrible amount of disorder in the heavens — great catastrophes or conflagrations occur frequently — but evolution gives us a perfectly natural explanation of such order as there is. No distinguished astronomer now traces "the finger of God" in the heavens; and astronomers ought to know best.”

Joseph McCabe (1867–1955) British writer

The Story of Religious Controversy http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/religious_controversy/ (1929), p. 86.

Nature

“Yet through Alexander (the Great) Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks … Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Greek magistracies … Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city, for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence.”

Plutarch book Moralia

On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A Loeb, F.C. Babbitt
Moralia, Others

Learning, Change

“Jesus … never laughed. Nothing has ever equaled the seriousness of his life; it is clear that pleasure, recreation, anything that could divert the mind, had no part in it. The life of Jesus was utterly taut, wholly caught up in God and in the woes of men, and he gave to nature only what he could not have refused it without destroying it.”

Pierre Nicole (1625–1695) French Jansenists

Essais de Morale (1753), XIII, 390, in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927) as translated by Mary Ilford (1968), p. 118

Life, Men, Pleasure, Nature

Quotes about God page 62

Quotes about God
page 62