Quotes about God
page 80

“Democracy is shot through with this delight in the incredible, this banal mysticism. I have alluded to its touching acceptance of the faith that progress is illimitable and ordained of God - that every human problem, in the very nature of things, may be solved.”

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

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

Faith, Democracy, Nature, Problem

“The great Jewish hoax about millions of God’s Chosen People whom the Germans supposedly exterminated seems to have been devised late in 1942, when it was claimed that in the autumn of that year the Germans had murdered two millions of the Holy Race in various ways. By 1943, the number had been increased to six million, and to keep up the progression, it was later increased to 40,000,000, which was seen to be so preposterous that it was reduced to 12,000,000, and at the end of the Crusade to Save the Soviet, the figure of six million was taken as the largest that could impose on the gullible goyim.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

People, Way, Autumn

“I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job.”

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

Private meeting with Old Order Amish in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (9 July 2004), reported in Jack Brubacker (2004-07-16), " Bush quietly meets with Amish here; they offer their prayers http://web.archive.org/web/20040722021601/http://lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/4/7565," Lancaster New Era Attributed, Private/attributed

“A god that cannot make a soul that is not totally depraved, I respectfully suggest, should retire from the business. And if a god has made us, knowing that we are totally depraved, why should we go to the same being to be “born again?””

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

Orthodoxy (1884)

Soul, Business

“[the foreign Muslims (or Turks)] “alone are capable of virtue, kindness, generosity, valour, good deed, good works, truthfulness, keeping of promises… loyalty, clarity of vision, justice, equity, recognition of rights, gratitude for favours and fear of God. They are, consequently, said to be noble, free born, virtuous, religious, of high pedigree and pure birth. These groups, alone are worthy of offices and posts in the government… Owing to their actions the government of the king is strengthened and adorned.” [On the other hand the] “low-born” (Indian) Muslims are capable only of vices - immodesty, falsehood, miserliness, misappropriation, wrongfulness, lies, evil-speaking ingratitude,…shamelessness, impundence… [So they are called] low-born, bazaar people, base, mean, worthless, plebian, shameless and of dirty birth”.”

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

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1990). Indian muslims: Who are they. Chapter 2.
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

People, Truth, Fear, Justice

“There is but one way in which God should be loved, and that is to take no step except with Him and for Him, and to follow with a generous self-abandonment every thing which He requires.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 542.

Love, Way

“Vedder has a variety of comments about God and/or belief, at one point he was saying, "When you're out in the desert, you can't believe the amount of stars. We've sent mechanisms out there, and they haven't found anything. They've found different colours of sand, and rings, and gasses, but nobody's shown me anything that makes me feel secure in what happens afterwards. All I really believe in is this moment, like right now."”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Rolling Stone, Oct 31 1991, "Right Here, Right Now".

Feeling, Star

“Gaius also proceeded, and said, I will now speak on the behalf of women, to take away their reproach. For as death and the curse came into the world by a woman, Gen. 3, so also did life and health: God sent forth his Son, made of a woman. Gal. 4:4. Yea, to show how much they that came after did abhor the act of the mother, this sex in the Old Testament coveted children, if happily this or that woman might be the mother of the Saviour of the world. I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, women rejoiced in him, before either man or angel. Luke 1:42-46. I read not that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one groat; but the women followed him, and ministered to him of their substance. Luke 8:2,3. ‘Twas a woman that washed his feet with tears, Luke 7:37-50, and a woman that anointed his body at the burial. John 11:2; 12:3. They were women who wept when he was going to the cross, Luke 23:27, and women that followed him from the cross, Matt. 27:55,56; Luke 23:55, and sat over against his sepulchre when he was buried. Matt. 27:61. They were women that were first with him at his resurrection-morn, Luke 24:1, and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead. Luke 24:22,23. Women therefore are highly favored, and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life.”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Part II, Ch. VIII : The Guests of Gaius
The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part II

Life, Death, Women, Children

“Would we have played with our lives for nothing but worldly gain?
If our people had run after earth's goods and gold,
Need they have smashed idols, and not idols sold?…
Fake gods that men had made, who did break and shatter?
Who routed infidel armies and destroyed them with bloody slaughter?
Who put out and made cold the sacred flame in Iran?”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Shikwa. https://archive.org/details/ShikwaJawabIShikwaIqbalsDialogueWithAllahTrKhushwantSinghIqbal Shikwa & Jawab Shikwa : The complaint and the answer : the human grievance and the divine response

Men, People

“Most merciful and gracious God, who hast preserved me unto this hour, I most humbly acknowledge Thee as the guide and companion of my youth. Thou hast protected me through the dangers of infancy and childhood, and in my youth Thou didst bless me with the full enjoyment, the happy intimacy, of the best of fathers. Be as gracious and merciful then as Thou hast hitherto been, now that I am about to enter a new stage of existence. Teach me, I beseech Thee, to strengthen in my soul the cultivation of Thy truth, the recollection of the uncertainty of life, the greatness of the objects for which I was created. Revive those delightful religious impressions which in early days I felt more strongly than now; and as Thou hast been pleased lately to permit me to look to a way of life to which formerly I dared not to do, let the leisure I shall enjoy enlarge my warmth of heart towards Thee. Make every branch of study which I may pursue strengthen my confidence in Thy ever-ruling providence, that, undeceived by views of false philosophy, I may ever in singleness of heart elevate my mind from Thy works unto Thy divine essence. Keep from me a vain and overbearing spirit; let me- ever have a thorough sense of my own ignorance and weakness; and keep me through all the trials and troubles of a transitory state in body and soul unto everlasting life, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.”

James David Forbes (1809–1868) Scottish physicist and glaciologist

"Completing my Twenty-first Year" (1839), a prayer written by Forbes on April 20th, 1830. Life and letters of James David Forbes p. 450.

Life, Happiness, Truth, Youth

“Music is not a way to reach god. Music is god.”

Krishna Kant Shukla (1959) Indian Classical musician

Music, Way

“"Most so-called liberated people that I know are full of it," remarked a caustic, albeit articulate, businessman attending a seminar I gave on emerging male/female relationships. "The feminist leadership is a good example. They have the worst qualities of both men and women. They have all the answers and nothing you can say ever changes their mind. Then, from what I read, one turns on and attacks the other—supposedly for ideological reasons, but it's just a variation on the old-fashioned male ritual of ego-tripping—'I'm for real, you're not—I'm the greatest, you're nothing.'"It's a real cast of characters, these feminist leaders," he continued. "There's the glamor queen one who's trying to be a movie star without copping to what she's doing. It's obvious, though. She's always being seen with celebrities and she's always dating the richest, most successful guys. Then there's the other one who's like a Jewish mother—complaining and telling everybody how to change, and how to live. I'm surprised she doesn't try and tell us what to eat."I looked through their magazine recently. It's full of the same kind of ads as the other women's magazines that Ms. supposedly abhors. You know, jewelry, deodorants, perfumes—and the articles are mainly old-fashioned victim variety stuff, an updated variation on the old "poor downtrodden women" theme."The 'liberated' guys they hold up as shining examples of what men should behave like are just as phony as the feminist women pretending to be so pure. They're workaholics, and they're the worst kind of arrogant—because God is on their side and unless you imitate them, you're a misguided pig. It feels like being at a church social when you watch them—at least as hypocritical, if not more so—because at least church types don't pretend to be open to discussing their beliefs. They're out front in thinking that they have all the answers."When what's-her-name ran for vice-president and lost, what did she do—she blamed the male establishment. God save us from female leadership! They can't stop blaming—even at that level. I thought of reminding her that this country has at least ten million more women than men and the odds were totally on her side and it was women who rejected her, and saw through her act; but I know better than to argue against that stuff with facts."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Earth Mothers in Disguise, p. 149
The Inner Male (1987)

Women, Men, People, Guy

“The air is pure and serene, lit by a light Divine, and by it we shall discover, fix, and contemplate the eternal Truth, with purified and illuminated eyes. There, too, all things are transformed, are one only Truth, one only image in the mirror of the Wisdom of God; and God created us that we might find, know, and possess this image in our essence and the Purity of our intelligence. Contemplating, applying our minds to this in the Divine Light, with simple and spiritual eyes, we attain to contemplative life.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 149

Life, Wisdom, Truth, Intelligence

“When neither our fellows nor our gods spoil our plans, we spoil them ourselves.”

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

Volume 4, Ch. 15
Fiction, The Book of the Long Sun (1993–1996)

“When God calls a man or woman, what they will eat, what they will use and everything they need for their journey will be provided abundantly by God.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On tithing - "TB Joshua Returns Elderly Woman's Half-A-Million Naira Tithe" http://www.premiumtimesng.com/letter-to-the-editor/176233-t-b-joshua-returns-elderly-womans-half-a-million-naira-tithe176233.html Premium Times, Nigeria (February 4 2015)

“By Christmas, with fair luck, he might be eligible for service in khaki: by Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench-lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene, might be his.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Eugene Gant contemplating entering the service in World War I
Source: Look Homeward, Angel (1929), p. 434

Spring, Christmas

“Any church which forsakes the regular and uniform for the periodical and spasmodic service of God, is doomed to decay; any church which relies for its spiritual strength and growth entirely upon seasons of "revival," will very soon have no genuine revivals to rely on. Our holy God will not conform His blessings to man's moods and moral caprice. If a church is declining, it may require a "revival" to restore it; but what need was there of its declining?”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 149.

Mood, Season

“The soul seeks God by faith, not by the reasonings of the mind and labored efforts, but by the drawings of love; to which inclinations God responds, and instructs the soul, which co-operates actively. God then puts the soul in a passive state where He accomplishes all, causing great progress, first by way of enjoyment, then by privation, and finally by pure love.”

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) French mystic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 240.

Love, Faith, Way, Soul

“Curse God, and die. To George it seemed like remarkably sage and relevant advice.”

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

Source: This Is the Way the World Ends (1986), Chapter 6, “In Which a Sea Captain, a General, a Therapist, and a Man of God Enter the Tale” (p. 61)

“Do sincerely repent, so that you stand before God; wail and weep with David; put on sackcloth and raiments of hair; scatter ashes upon your heads; humble yourselves with the king of Nineveh; confess your faults with Manasseh; die unto your ambitious flesh and pride; fear the Lord, your God, with all your powers; judge in all wisdom with fear and trembling; help the oppressed; grieve not the distressed; promote the just cause of the widows and orphans; protect the good; punish the evil in a christian manner; discharge the duties of your offices properly; seek the kingdom and country that will endure forever; and reflect that you, however highly esteemed, upon earth are only pilgrims and sojourners in a strange land.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Exhortation http://www.mennosimons.net/ft016-exhortation.html

Wisdom, Fear, Evil, Help

“Thus the word reveals the Divine Essence; His incarnation makes that Life, that Love, that Light, which is eternally resident in God obvious to souls that steadily contemplate Himself. These terms Life, Love, Light — so abstract, so simple, so suggestive — meet in God; but they meet also in Jesus Christ. They do not only make Him the centre of a philosophy; they belong to the mystic language of faith more truly than to the abstract terminalogy of speculative thought. They draw hearts to Jesus; they invest Him with a higher than any intellectual beauty.”

Henry Liddon (1829–1890) British theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 91.

Love, Life, Faith, Beauty

“It is known that afore miracles come sorrow and anguish and tribulation; and that is for that we should know our own feebleness and our mischiefs that we are fallen in by sin, to meeken us and make us to dread God and cry for help and grace. Miracles come after that, and they come of the high Might, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, shewing His virtue and the joys of Heaven so far at it may be in this passing life: and that to strengthen our faith and to increase our hope, in charity. Wherefore it pleaseth Him to be known and worshipped in miracles. Then signifieth He thus: He willeth that we be not borne over low for sorrow and tempests that fall to us: for it hath ever so been afore miracle-coming.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36

Life, Wisdom, Faith, Hope

“I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.”

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

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Men, War, Children, People

“The cry of distress lays hold of our Lord's omnipotence. It is as easy for God to supply thy greatest as thy smallest wants, even as it was within His power to form a system or an atom, to create a blazing sun as to kindle the fire-fly's lamp.”

Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) British divine

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 273.

Sun, Cry, Flying

“Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it;
We are happy now because God wills it.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Prelude to Pt. I, st. 6
The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)

Happiness, Heart

“The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien cults. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Hindu View of Life (1960)

War, People, History, Time

“Take heed not to be transformed into a Caesar, not to be dipped in the purple dye, for it does happen. Keep yourself therefore, simple, good, pure, grave, unaffected, the friend of justice, religious, kind, affectionate, strong for your proper work. Wrestle to be the man philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods, save men. Life is brief; there is but one harvest of earthly existence, a holy disposition and neighborly acts.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 30
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Life, Men, Justice, Strong

“On seeing an ultrasound picture- It was an awkward situation because she was happy with it. I was like 'Oh God'. It was an odd looking thing. I couldn't say 'Oh, it looks like you' because that would be a dis.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 2
On Medicine

Happiness

“I once read that there's nothing worse for everyone concerned than a reign that's lasted too long. I've also heard that God is eternal.”

Nicolas Chamfort (1741–1794) French writer

Reflections

Reading

“I have resolved, if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, to reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire.”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Letter written the night before his duel with Aaron Burr (10 July 1804)

“On that Day whatever cause prompteth the believer to believe in Him, the same will also be available to the unbeliever. But when the latter suffereth himself to be wrapt in veils, the same cause shutteth him out as by a veil. Thus, as is clearly evident today, those who have set their faces toward God, the True One, have believed in Him because of the Bayán, while such as are veiled have been deprived because of it.”

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

VI, 4
The Persian Bayán

“Those people overseas didn't go to Ivy League schools… Well, we're so sophisticated, we think we've got everything figured out. We know about evolution, we know about Darwin, we know about all these things that says God isn't real, we know about all this stuff. And if we've been in many schools, in the most advanced schools, we have been inundated with skepticism and secularism. And, uh, overseas they're simple, humble. You tell 'em God loves 'em and they say, "Okay, he loves me". You say God will do miracles and they say, "Okay, we believe him."”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

That's what God's looking for, that's why they have miracles.
2013-04-01
Pat Robertson
The 700 Club
Television, quoted in * 2013-04-01
Robertson: 'Simple' Foreigners More Likely to Experience Miracles than 'Sophisticated' Americans
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/robertson-simple-foreigners-more-likely-experience-miracles-sophisticated-americans
Answering a viewer question from Ken: "Why do amazing miracles (people raised from the dead, blind eyes open, lame people walking) happen with great frequency in places like Africa, and not here in the USA?"

Love, People, School, Thinking

“When four rowers are in a boat, with their backs to the bow, their simple office is to pull the oars. The steersman's office is to look ahead and work the helm. The moment that the rower turns steersman, and tries to look over his shoulder or outpull his fellow oarsman, the boat loses headway. So you and I are placed with our backs to the future. In our hands are the oars of Christian endeavor. Let God steer the boat, and let us attend to the oars.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 125.

Future

“Humanity is my temple, and I am its worshiper. The disabled are my supreme God, and I am their grace seeker.”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

Mānavatā hī merā mandira maiṃ hūँ isakā eka pujārī ॥
haiṃ vikalāṃga maheśvara mere maiṃ hūँ inakā kṛpābhikhārī ॥
[Rambhadracharya, Jagadguru (Speaker), 2003, जगद्गुरु रामभद्राचार्य विकलांग विश्वविद्यालय, Hindi, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Handicapped University, CD, Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, India, Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Handicapped University, 00:02:16, मानवता ही मेरा मन्दिर मैं हूँ इसका एक पुजारी ॥ हैं विकलांग महेश्वर मेरे मैं हूँ इनका कृपाभिखारी ॥]

“God wants the Last Day to come and these people want to have fun in this world. The world has gotten old, it is over, the world is done! God wants to create the Hereafter and wants to show the Hereafter to people.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

4 January 2014.
A9 TV addresses, 2014

People, World

“Ian McEwan: I guess my starting point would be: the brain is responsible for consciousness, and we can be reasonably sure that when that brain ceases to be, when it falls apart and decomposes, that will be the end of us. From that quite a lot of things follow, especially morally. We are the very privileged owners of a brief spark of consciousness, and we therefore have which one can work towards and maybe make sacrifices, and, crucially, make sacrifices of other people. We have a marvellous gift, and you see it develop in children, this ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own, and this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.Richard Dawkins: I profoundly agree with you, and I've always felt that one of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.Ian McEwan: And if you have a sacred text that tells you how the world began or what the relationship is between this sky-god and you, it does curtail your curiosity, it cuts off a source of wonder. The loveliness of the world in its wondrousness is not apparent to me in Islam or Christianity and all the other major religions.”

Ian McEwan (1948) British author

from The Root of All Evil?, Channel 4 documentary, United Kingdom (January 2006).

Children, People, World, Religion

“This empirical volition seduced by the vision of the sense-world, be this sensual or malicious, or be it ever so much raised above the brutal,—this willingness to stay where one temporally is, to accept the actual of experience for the ideal, the mere particular of sense for the universal of the spirit, the dead finite for the ever-living infinite, the world for God,—this is exactly what sin is.”

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.368

World, Sense, Universe, Dead

“On Aka, god is a word without referent. No capital letters. No creator, only creation. No eternal father to reward and punish, justify injustice, ordain cruelty, offer salvation. Eternity not an endpoint but a continuity. Primal division of being into material and spiritual only as two-as-one, or one in two aspects. […] The Akan system is a spiritual discipline with spiritual goals, but they're exactly the same goals it seeks for bodily and ethical well-being. Right action is its own reward. Dharma without karma.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Telling (2000), Ch. 4, §3 (p. 94)

“Did God truly build and populate a small planet for His own purposes; perhaps merely to relieve His boredom?”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 8 (p. 294)

“His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him.
He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!"”

Philip José Farmer (1918–2009) American science fiction writer

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (p. 1; First lines, depicting the death of Sir Richard Francis Burton).

Death, Dead

“Devotion as an expression of gratitude to God can turn into a social force and bring about transformative changes in all aspects of human life and at all levels of society.”

Pandurang Shastri Athavale (1920–2003) Indian philosopher, spiritual leader and social reformer

Acceptance speech while receiving the 1997 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, from HRH Prince Philip at a public ceremony held in Westminster Abbey, May 6, 1997. Source: Leader of Spiritual Movement Wins $1.2 Million Religion Prize http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E3DB1230F935A35750C0A961958260 New York Times, March 6, 1997.

Life, Change, Gratitude

“The world was created by God and we are always to remember as we deal with the world, what was God’s purpose here, in creating this? But at the same time, while the world was created essentially good, it is fallen and not normative. Thus, perfectionism with regard to nature is anti Christian. Everything has a purpose in creation, but God created man and set him in the garden of Eden with a purpose to use and to develop nature. Thus, while hybridization is forbidden, the improvement of various species is definitely a part of our responsibility. Thus, we do not look back to Eden, we look forward to the kingdom of God. Those who hold to a perfectionism with regard to nature are anti Christian. The logic of this perfectionism with regard to nature, holding nature as normative is to eat raw foods only because you can’t improve on nature, it is to be a nudist because you can’t improve on nature, it is to deny housing because housing is an improvement on nature. This is all very very definitely hostile to scripture because while creation is essentially good, from the biblical perspective, it is to be developed by man. There is to be an improvement in terms of the guidelines laid down by God. Thus, hybridization is not Christian, but improvement is definitely the Christian responsibility. Hybridization and unequal yoking involve a fundamental disrespect for God’s handiwork, and it leads to futile experimentation. But for us as creationists, the fertility and the potentiality of the world rests in his law, in it’s pattern, in it’s fixity.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Hybridization and the Law (n. d.)

Hostility, World, Law, Food

“I want to quote this— "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and to my country and obey Scout law", on and on and on and on. I mean, God's in the first 10 words. So – why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn't have any trouble reading the oath? Why didn't you just shut up?”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2002-10-30
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
to atheist Eagle Scout Darrel Lambert

Law, Quotes, Reading, Country

“For though he builds glorious temples, 'tis odd
He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.”

James Russell Lowell A Fable for Critics

A Fable for Critics (1848)

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”

Jonathan Edwards book Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

Hate, Hell, Time

“No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period. The profound philosophy which Jonathan Edwards applied to theology, the popular preaching of George Whitefield, had aroused the thought and stirred the people of the Colonies in preparation for this great event. No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England, and especially on the Continent, lent their influence to the general sentiment of the times. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People, World, Search, Freedom

“That is to say, within less than twenty years after the Constitution was formed, and in obedience to that general opinion of the time which condemned slavery as a sin in morals and a blunder in economy, eight of the States had abolished it by law — four of them having already done so when the instrument was framed; and Mr. Douglas might as justly quote the fact that there were slaves in New York up to 1827 as proof that the public opinion of the State sanctioned slavery, as to try to make an argument of the fact that there were slave laws upon the statute-books of the original States. He forgets that there was not in all the colonial legislation of America one single law which recognized the rightfulness of slavery in the abstract; that in 1774 Virginia stigmatized the slave-trade as 'wicked, cruel, and unnatural'; that in the same year Congress protested against it 'under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of country'; that in 1775 the same Congress denied that God intended one man to own another as a slave; that the new Discipline of the Methodist Church, in 1784, and the Pastoral Letter of the Presbyterian Church, in 1788, denounced slavery; that abolition societies existed in slave States, and that it was hardly the interest even of the cotton-growing States, where it took a slave a day to clean a pound of cotton, to uphold the system. Mr. Douglas incessantly forgets to tell us that Jefferson, in his address to the Virginia Legislature of 1774, says that 'the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state'; and while he constantly remembers to remind us that the Jeffersonian prohibition of slavery in the territories was lost in 1784, he forgets to add that it was lost, not by a majority of votes — for there were sixteen in its favor to seven against it — but because the sixteen votes did not represent two thirds of the States; and he also incessantly forgets to tell us that this Jeffersonian prohibition was restored by the Congress of 1785, and erected into the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was re-enacted by the first Congress of the United States and approved by the first President.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love, Books, Law, Quotes

“Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard
the utterance of the Delphic Oracle:
“Beware the age of seventy-three.”
Plenty of time to enjoy himself still.
He’s thirty. The deadline
the god has given him is quite enough
to cope with future dangers.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

Nero’s Deadline http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=53&cat=1 Collected Poems (1992)

Age, Time, Future

“There is one important aspect of my answer that I would change, however. I have come to appreciate as a result of a closer reading of the biblical text that God’s command to Israel was not primarily to exterminate the Canaanites but to drive them out of the land. It was the land that was (and remains today!) paramount in the minds of these Ancient Near Eastern peoples. The Canaanite tribal kingdoms which occupied the land were to be destroyed as nation states, not as individuals. The judgment of God upon these tribal groups, which had become so incredibly debauched by that time, is that they were being divested of their land. Canaan was being given over to Israel, whom God had now brought out of Egypt. If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples.
It is therefore completely misleading to characterize God’s command to Israel as a command to commit genocide. Rather it was first and foremost a command to drive the tribes out of the land and to occupy it. Only those who remained behind were to be utterly exterminated. There may have been no non-combatants killed at all. That makes sense of why there is no record of the killing of women and children, such as I had vividly imagined. Such scenes may have never taken place, since it was the soldiers who remained to fight. It is also why there were plenty of Canaanite people around after the conquest of the land, as the biblical record attests.”

William Lane Craig book Reasonable Faith

[Subject: The “Slaughter” of the Canaanites Re-visited, Reasonable Faith, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8973, 2011-10-20], quoted in [Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig, Richard, Dawkins, Guardian, 2011-10-20, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/richard-dawkins-william-lane-craig, 2011-10-20]

Women, Children, People, Imagination

“For God’s sake, reform and improve the politics of our country.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

At the basic Education Conference in 1940, p. 203.
Quest for Truth (1999)

Country

“You, whom I made for man's worship when earth was younger and fairer, hearken, and learn why I breathe new life into husks from my scrap-heaps! Gods of old days, discrowned, disjected, and treated as rubbish, hark to the latest way of the folk whose fathers you succored! They have discarded you utterly.”

James Branch Cabell book Figures of Earth

Miramon, in Ch. XXXII : The Redemption of Poictesme
Figures of Earth (1921)

Life, Way, Learning

“As the reflections of our pride upon our defects are bitter, disheartening, and vexatious, so the return of the soul towards God is peaceful and sustained by confidence. You will find by experience how much more your progress will be aided by this simple, peaceful turning towards God, than by all your chagrin and spite at the faults that exist in you.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 566.

Peace, Soul, Confidence

“When I sit near the ocean in the morning and write my verses and breathe the salty wind which is coming from the water, I rejoice in God and I am blissful, as I was as a child.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Wenn ich morgens am Meere sitze und Verse dichte und atme dabei den salzigen Wind, der vom Wasser herüberspringt, dann gehe ich auf in Gott und bin glücklich, wie ich es nur noch in der Kinderzeit war.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Water

“Old as the everlasting hills; immovable as the throne of God; and certain as the purposes of eternal power, against all hinderances, and against all delays, and despite all the mutations of human instrumentalities, it is the faith of my soul, that this anti-slavery cause will triumph.”

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

The Anti-Slavery Movement. Extracts from a Lecture before Various. Anti-Slavery Bodies, in the Winter of 1855.
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

Faith, Soul

“If you do not pray to God, what is that to Him? It is only your misfortune.”

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

Women Saints of East and West

“This is the exact definition of my ego. When Fox had my head 40 feet high at Shea Stadium they said to me, "We're going to give out 100,000 temporary tattoos of your face at the Super Bowl." And I just swallowed and said, "No. God. Don't. You're not going to, you can't possibly — what do you mean, temporary?"”

Keith Olbermann (1959) American sports and political commentator

" Angry Sportscaster Keith Olbermann has Piazza's Bat—and is Keeping it! http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=10667CA6AE16AADE&p_docnum=1" by Jason Gay, New York Observer (2001-03-19)

Tattoo

“.. I write you from the French front where I'am serving as a soldier in the Russian ambulance Corps. How are you feeling and what are you doing? How are your friends, Lissitsky, Libakov [also former students of Pen], Mazel, Mekler, and Chagall? Please, for God's sake, answer me. I would be so glad to hear how everyone is.
I'm in fine health, but tired of it all – it's utterly disgraceful, makes the soul turn cold. If only it [the war] would just end.
What are you working on, what are you doing? Please write me.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Yours Zadkine.
Quote in a letter of Zadkine (in France) to his former art-teacher Yuri Moiseevich Pen in Vitebsk, Russia, 16 Nov. 1916 (transl. into Belorussian E.M. Kichina); as quoted in Vitebsk: The Life of Art, by Aleksandra Semenovna Shatskikh; Yale University Press, 2007, p. 19
1915 - 1940

War, Health, Feeling, Soul

“At fifteen years of age, when first my parents settled down in London (temporarily as they thought) I had never been in England, never had an English friend or English governess, or English tuition of any sort or kind. I did not speak one word of English. Then how did it all come about? Neo-Victorians and Neo-Georgians will put it down to destiny; others to predestination. I, in my humble way, put it down to the Will of God. And looking back on my long life and its many changes I can trace the links of my chain of life that began on the great plains of Hungary, continued through the heart of London, and find me now at this hour of writing this book in Monte Carlo jotting down all that I can remember of those links which led me one by one to the conception of my first literary work. If any one of those links had not been, if any turn of event in my life had been different, I would probably have ended my days in the country of my birth and known nothing of the happiness which comes from love, from the affection of friends (such as one meets in England) and from success in the work to which I devoted so many years of my life.”

Emma Orczy (1865–1947) Hungarian-British author of "The Scarlet Pimpernel"

Source: Links in the Chain of Life (1947), Ch. 1

Love, Life, Happiness, Books

“I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds. All bibles are man-made.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

John Burroughs, in "Religious Contrasts : Letters of Pantheist and a Churchman", in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128, No. 4 (October 1921), p. 520.
Misattributed

“It is absurd to suppose, if this is God’s world, that men must always be selfish barbarians.”

Charles Fletcher Dole (1845–1927) Unitarian minister, speaker, and writer

The Coming People (1897).

Men, World, Selfishness

“M. Tyndall hearing thys, ful of godly zeale, and not bearing that blasphemous saying, replied againe & sayde: I defie the Pope and all his lawes: and further added, that if God spared hym life, ere many yeares he would cause a boy that driueth the plough to know more of the Scripture, then he did.”

John Foxe (1516–1587) British historian

Bk. 8, p. 1076
Acts and Monuments (1563)

Life, Law, Boy

“One of the most melancholy consequences of this habit of deferring to other nations, and to other systems, is the fact that it causes us to undervalue the high blessings we so peculiarly enjoy; to render us ungrateful towards God, and to make us unjust to our fellow men, by throwing obstacles in their progress towards liberty.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

A Letter to His Countrymen (1834)

Men

“All true development tends ever to God. Its objective aim is the restoration by the second Adam of the Divine image forfeited by the first; and, incidentally, it transmutes grief into gladness and sighs into songs. But it is always a development in Christ, since it is only " in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God " that any of our race can come "unto a perfect man."”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 216.

Faith, Knowledge, Christ, Perfection

“I wanted to make my life short, and I was at a party in Toppers' Hose, and the coincidence was too much. It was like a message from God. OK, it was disappointing that all God had to say to me was, like, Jump off a roof, but I didn't blame him. What else was he supposed to tell me?”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

A Long Way Down (2005)

Life, Disappointment

“And shall they rise, all these? Will there be a trumpet blast so shrill that none of them may refuse to hear it, and the soul, re-entering its shrine of eminent or common clay, pass upward to the judgment? "Many and mighty, but all hushed," shall they submit with us to the judgment of the last assize? And in that world is it true that gold is not the currency, and that rank is not hereditary, and that there is only one name that is honored? Then, if this is the end of all men, let the living lay it to heart. Solemn and thoughtful, let us search for an assured refuge; childlike and earnest, let us conf1de in the one accepted Name; let us realize the tender and infinite nearness of God our Father, through Jesus our Surety and our Friend.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 519.

Men, World, Soul, Search

“But I couldn't help thinking, god, all these mailmen do is drop in letters and get laid. This is the job for me, oh yes yes yes.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

Thinking, Help

“He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy at which he should not be disjected; in the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manly shape, and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Death, Boy, Thinking, Appearance

“That the universe, as was once thought, expands and contracts indefinitely, one Big Bang collapsing into another one, seemed reasonable enough. But in both models of the universe, what caused the first Big Bang? Or was there a first Big Bang, any more than a last number? If there was a first cause, was there a first causer? Did Big Bangs just happen to happen? Can we name the first causer “God”? We can name it anything we want. I can name it after myself. It is utterly insignificant what it is called, because we would be giving a name to something that falls outside all categories of thought and must be unknowable and irrelevant to knowledge. So naming it is a futile enterprise. The word “God” is unhelpful because it implies it has a knowable definition.”

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

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

Knowledge, Universe

“Who do you love? If you love God, you should love people. If you don't love people, you don't love God. It's that simple.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Love, People

“The Bible, as a revelation from God, was not designed to give us all the information we might desire, nor to solve all the questions about which the human soul is perplexed, but to impart enough to be a safe guide to the haven of eternal rest.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 28.

Soul, Question

“There, but for the grace of God, goes God.”

Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897–1953) American screenwriter

On Orson Welles, quoted in the New York Times, 11 October 1985

Funny

“In short, greatly as I admire all that has been said here to-night, gladly and gratefully as I recognise the genuinely philosophic temper and the authentic philosophic place it all most certainly has, I am still moved to say that my honoured colleagues, in this their common underlying conception, have to my mind all "missed the mark and come short of the glory of God." They have not seized nor expressed the complete Ideal of the Reason.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The City of God and the True God as its Head (In Royce’s “The Conception of God: a Philosophical Discussion Concerning the Nature of the Divine Idea as a Demonstrable Reality”), p.89

Night

“First they give you everything that you want
Then they take back everything that you have
They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees
They can work with satan while they dress like the saints
They know god exists for the devil told them so
They scream my name aloud down into the well below”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

The Next Day (2013)
Song lyrics, The Next Day (2013)

“Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, makes the monk much better skilled in riding and hunting, than in divinity. The same poit, afterwards, in the Ploughman's Tale, takes occasion to accuse the monks of pride, because they rode on coursers like knights, having their hawks and hounds with them. In the same tale he severely reproaches the priests for their dissolute manners, saying, that many of them thought more upon hunting with their dogs, and blowing the horn, than of the service they owed to God.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 10
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Hunting

Dogs

“Says Oliver Cromwell: "What are all histories but God manifesting Himself, that He hath shaken down and trampled under foot whatsoever He hath not planted?" History is not a series of jumbled happenings. God is in the facts of history as truly as He is in the march of the seasons, the revolution of the planets, or the architecture of the worlds.”

John Lanahan (1815–1903)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 426.

World, History, Season

“One of the most characteristic new developments since the 1970s has been the rise of a type of religiosity that we usually call “fundamentalism” in most of the major world religions, including the three religions of God. A highly political spirituality, it is literal and intolerant in its vision. In the United States, which has always been prone to extremist and apocalyptic enthusiasm, Christian fundamentalism has attached itself to the New Right. Fundamentalists campaign for the abolition of legal abortion and for a hard line on moral and social decency.”

Karen Armstrong book A History of God

A History of God (1993)

World, Religion

“Gay love, God save it, so soone hotte, so soone colde.”

Nicholas Udall Ralph Roister Doister

Christian Custance, Act IV, sc. viii.
Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1553)

Love

“So I really don't care about anything he [God] has got to say, and if he came down from heaven right now, in a big pair of hobnail boots, waving the book of Judges in my face, I'd simply tell him what I tell every other evangelising prick I meet: "No thanks. I'm not interested in your phony salvation. I'd prefer damnation. Now piss off, I've got some sinning to do."”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"God the psycho" (2 February 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=G5JtxrR6msg 2008

Books

“But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, , quoted in [2012-05-13, In LU Speech, Romney Boldly Touts Faith, and Traditional American Values, Jason, Johnson, Bearing Drift, http://bearingdrift.com/2012/05/13/in-lu-speech-romney-boldly-touts-faith-and-traditional-american-values/, 2012-05-15]
2012

Justice, Freedom, Waiting

“And I said in underbreath —
All our life is mixed with death, —
And who knoweth which is best?
And I smiled to think God's greatness
Flowed around our incompleteness, —
Round our restlessness, His rest.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Rhyme of the Duchess; reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 514.

Life, Death, Smile, Thinking

“God created this world with a moral design. Grief, tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Opening address to the National Day of Prayer in Suva, 15 May 2005 (excerpts) http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/page_4607.shtml

Love, World, Time

“Peat preserves timber, animals, and such unexpected treasure-troves as hoards of acorns and firkins of beech butter from the forests which preceded the bogs. A whole archaeology may very well lie in peat, and the pollen record may reveal past history. At the base of Irish bogs the Fir Bolg (the little people), their axes, bridges, butter, and forest life are well preserved. They and their forests were banished, as if by magic, by the Tuatha de Danan (the Children of Diana) who now dig the peat. Diana was displaced in turn by Mary, mother of God. But all are mixed in the peat and the tongue of Ireland.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 9.9

Life, Children, People, Lie

“There is no human law or law of God or national law that states that any healthy being has to permit the snake to eat the mouse - but on the other hand, it is perfectly justified to defend the mouse.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

To Leon Goldensohn, 6/6/46, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - Page 151 - History - 2004

Law

“Surely just about everybody has faced a moral dilemma and secretly wished, "If only somebody — somebody I trusted — could just tell me what to do!" Wouldn't this be morally inauthentic? Aren't we responsible for making our own moral decisions? Yes, but the virtues of "do it yourself" moral reasoning have their limits, and if you decide, after conscientious consideration, that your moral decision is to delegate further moral decisions in your life to a trusted expert, then you have made your own moral decision. You have decided to take advantage of the division of labor that civilization makes possible and get the help of expert specialists.We applaud the wisdom of this course in all other important areas of decision-making (don't try to be your own doctor, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, and so forth). Even in the case of political decisions, like which way to vote, the policy of delegation can be defended. … Is the a dereliction of [one's] dut[y] as a citizen? I don't think so, but it does depend on my having good grounds for trusting [the delegate's] judgment. … That why those who have an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a problem: if they themselves haven't conscientiously considered, on their own, whether their pastors or priests or rabbis or imams are worthy of this delegated authority over their own lives, then they are in fact taking a personally immoral stand.This is perhaps the most shocking implication of my inquiry, and I do not shrink from it, even though it may offend many who think of themselves as deeply moral. It is commonly supposed that it is entirely exemplary to adopt the moral teachings of one's own religion without question, because -- to put it simply — it is the word of God (as interpreted, always, by the specialists to whom one has delegated authority). I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes that a particular point of moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible says so, or because "that is what all Muslims [Hindus, Sikhs… ] [sic] believe, and I am a Muslim [Hindu, Sikh… ]" [sic], should be seen to be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Life, Wisdom, Faith, Religion

“At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"America First? America Last? America at Last?," Lowell Lecture, Harvard University (20 April 1992).
1990s

Hate, Quotes

“It should be mentioned that any external supernatural agency plays no part whatever in the moulding of the character of a Buddhist. In Buddhism there is no one to reward or punish. Pain or happiness are the inevitable results of one's actions. The question of incurring the pleasure or displeasure of a God does not enter the mind of a Buddhist. Neither hope of reward nor fear of punishment acts as an incentive to him to do good or to refrain from evil.”

Narada Maha Thera (1898–1983) Sri Lankan monk and missionary

Buddhism in a Nutshell

Pain, Happiness, Pleasure, Fear

“These American values, this great moral heritage, is shared and lived in my religion as it is in yours. I was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor. I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Romney later admitted he didn't actually see them march together, but believes that they did march together. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2007/12/22/witnesses-say-mitt-romneys-father-martin-luther-king-marched-together/ Faith in America speech, 2007

Love, Religion, Home

“If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.”

E.M. Forster book Aspects of the Novel

Source: Aspects of the Novel (1927), Chapter Three: People

Universe

“God says he will never be satisfied with the infidels.”

Mohammed Omar (1959–2013) Founder and former leader of the Taliban

Mullah Omar - in his own words http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,558076,00.html September 2001.

“Commodification has led most people to view God as a device to be used rather than an all-powerful Creator to be revered.”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

People

“My son Track…he's gonna be deployed in September to Iraq. Pray… for this country, that our leaders… are sending [U. S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Address to a class of ministry students at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in June 2008; Web Site With Speeches and Sermons From Palin's Former Church Shuts Down as Religious Views of Candidate Face Scrutiny http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/website-with-sp.html; Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html 2008

Country

“God is all love, and the more we are like Him the more we shall love; the trouble is not in the quantity but the quality of our love. If it were wholly pure, wholly unselfish, it could not be too deep or intense; for all true loving lifts us to a higher plane, bringing us nearer to God and the eternal goodness.”

Arthur Kenney (1776–1855) Irish dean

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 395.

Love

“One who has not found peace within himself will forever be giving speeches about peace. This world is a pulpit upon which man preaches, and there is no end to this talk! For millions of years man has been speaking this way, but he has not come forward to first find peace within himself. There is no use in making speeches. Man must acquire the qualities of God and live in that state. Only then can he speak of peace, only then can he speak the speech of God and dispense the justice of God's kingdom.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

World, Peace, Justice, Way

“The rainbow stands as a poignant reminder that God keeps His promises. Despite the wickedness in the world, God has not sent another global Flood to destroy all flesh. Interestingly, if the Flood of Noah’s day was just a local flood like many Christians sadly believe and teach, God has broken His promise time and time again. Since the time of Noah, there have been numerous local floods—some of them very devastating to human and animal life. But there’s never been another global Flood because God keeps His promises.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Rainbow Lights at the Ark https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2016/12/20/rainbow-lights-at-ark/, Around the World with Ken Ham (December 20, 2016) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Life, World, Time, Animals

“After settling the affairs of Ajmir, the conqueror marched "towards Dehli (may God preserve its prosperity and perpetuate its splendour!) which is among the chief (mother) cities of Hind. When he arrived at Dehli, he saw " a fortress which in height and strength had not its equal nor second throughout the length and breadth of the seven climes." The army encamped around the fort. " A torrent of blood flowed on the field of battle, and it became evident to the chiefs that if they did not seek for safety from the sword of the king of the earth, and if they should deliver into the hands of Satan the time of option and the reins of good counsel, the condition of Dehli would be like that of Ajmir; so from the dread of kingly punishment, the Rai and mukaddams of that country placed their heads upon the line of slavery, and their feet within the circle of obedience, and made firm the conditions of tribute [mdlguzdrt) and the usages of service.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the conquest of Delhi. Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 216. Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Time, Country