Quotes about God
page 82

Albert Barnes photo
Julian of Norwich photo

“Prayer uniteth the soul to God.”

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

The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 43

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare.”

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

1928, as reported in Development Without Destruction: Economics of the Spinning Wheel, p. 97
1920s

Adrienne von Speyr photo
Jacob M. Appel photo

“If God wanted teenagers to be abstinent, puberty would begin at twenty.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

The Replacement (2006)

Harry Chapin photo
Adam Smith photo
Max Scheler photo
Samuel I. Prime photo

“Happy are they who freely mingle prayer and toil till God responds to the one and rewards the other.”

Samuel I. Prime (1812–1885) American clergyman, traveler, and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 468.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Julian of Norwich photo

“God willeth to be seen and to be sought: to be abided and to be trusted.”

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

The Second Revelation, Chapter 10

Bernice King photo
Paul Klee photo

“I am God / So much of the divine / is heaped in me / that I cannot die.
My head burns to the point of bursting.
One of the worlds / hidden in it / wants to be born. / But now I must suffer / to bring it forth.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1901), # 155, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902

Douglas Adams photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.”

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

PV, p. 73; SV1, XIII, p. 559; Jon Bartley Stewart. 2008. Johan Ludvig Heiberg: Philosopher, Littérateur, Dramaturge, and Political Thinker. Museum Tusculanum Press.
Disputed

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The Fugitive Slave Law http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75&Itemid=254, a lecture in New York City (7 March 1854), The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904)

Max Beckmann photo
Meher Baba photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
John Calvin photo

“The name of Christ is used here instead of the Church, because the similitude was intended to apply—not to God's only-begotten Son, but to us. It is a passage that is full of choice consolation, inasmuch as he calls the Church Christ; for Christ confers upon us this honour —that he is willing to be esteemed and recognised, not in himself merely, but also in his members. Hence the same Apostle says elsewhere, (Eph. i. 23,) that the Church is his completion, as though he would, if separated from his members, be incomplete.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Commentary on 1 Corinthians, 12:12.
Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 1848, Rev. William Pringle, tr., Edinburgh, Volume 1, p. 405. http://books.google.com/books?id=tQsOAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA405&dq=%22calls+the+church+christ%22&hl=en&ei=w3_pTZW2CYLx0gGl2L2WAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q=%22calls%20the%20church%20christ%22&f=false
Epistles to the Corinthians

Will Arnett photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
John Keats photo

“That large utterance of the early gods!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Bk. I
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)

William Morley Punshon photo

“There are no trifles in the moral universe of God. Speak me a word to-day; — it shall go ringing on through the ages.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 388.

Richard Dawkins photo

“To an atheist […], there is no all-seeing all-loving god to keep us free from harm. But atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life". But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which He must work.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: The Knowledge of the Holy (1978), p. 53.

Will Eisner photo

“Graves: Now, why on earth would the Elders of Zion have their kingdom be an apologia for Vishnu, a Hindu God?”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.82

Temple Grandin photo

“They may ask why nature or God created such horrible conditions as autism, manic depression, and schizophrenia. However, if the genes that caused these conditions were eliminated there might be a terrible price to pay.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman ISBN 978-0-399-18561-8, p. 428

Marguerite Bourgeoys photo

“God is not satisfied if we preserve the love we owe our neighbour; we must preserve our neighbour in the love he ought to have for us.”

Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620–1700) French colonist and foundress

The Writings of Marguerite Bourgeoys, p. 170

Báb photo
Muqtada Sadr photo
Woodrow Wilson photo
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher photo

“EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL…. Nature is no respecter of birth or money power when she lavishes her mental and physical gifts.  We fight God when our Social System dooms the brilliant clever child of a poor man to the same level as his father.”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

p. 71. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027924509#page/n100/mode/1up
Records (1919) https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027924509#page/n0/mode/1up

Oliver Cowdery photo
Adelaide Anne Procter photo
Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak photo

“No dignity is higher in the eyes of God than royalty… Royalty is a light emanating from God, and a ray from the sun, the illuminator of the universe.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl. trans. by H. Blochmann, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Gertrude Jekyll photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1688. God sends Meat, and the Devil sends Cooks.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1735) : Bad Commentators spoil the best of books, So God sends meat (they say) the devil cooks.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

John Flavel photo
William Morley Punshon photo
Edward Thomson photo

“You may be a dreadful failure. Christ is a Divine success. "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth."”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 81.

James Hudson Taylor photo

“Let but faithful labourers be found, who will prove faithful to God, and there is no reason to fear that God will not prove faithful to them.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Four: Survivors’ Pact. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1984, 58).

Ramakrishna photo

“As a toy fruit or a toy elephant reminds one of the real fruit and the living animal, so do the images that are worshipped remind one of the God who is formless and eternal.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 325

Russell Brand photo
Herrick Johnson photo

“If God is a reality, and the soul is a reality, and you are an immortal being, what are you doing with your Bible shut?”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 38.

William Ralph Inge photo

“It is becoming impossible for those who mix at all with their fellow-men to believe that the grace of God is distributed denominationally.”

William Ralph Inge (1860–1954) Dean of St Pauls

" Our Present Discontents http://books.google.com/books?id=dFYPAQAAIAAJ&q="It+is+becoming+impossible+for+those+who+mix+at+all+with+their+fellow-men+to+believe+that+the+grace+of+God+is+distributed+denominationally"&pg=PA32#v=onepage" (August 1919) in Outspoken Essays (1919), p. 32

William Cowper photo

“As dreadful as the Manichean god,
Adored through fear, strong only to destroy.”

Source: The Task (1785), Book V, The Winter Morning Walk, Line 444.

Frederick William Robertson photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“Before the gods and after, always, are the streams. Caves, stones, hills. Trees. The earth. The darkness of the earth.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“Dragonfly” (p. 227)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Éamon de Valera photo

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland - happy, vigorous, spiritual - that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved. One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

Radio broadcast http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/eamon-de-valera/719124-address-by-mr-de-valera/, "On Language & the Irish Nation" (17 March 1943), often called "The Ireland that we dreamed of" speech

John Updike photo
Albert Camus photo
John McCain photo
Vyasa photo
Ben Carson photo

“When we have done our best, we also have to learn that we still need to rely on God. Our best – no matter how good – is incomplete if we leave God out of the picture.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 146

William Lane Craig photo
John Ruskin photo
Ray Comfort photo
Robert Sarah photo

“When he drapes himself in silence, as God himself dwells in a great silence, man is close to heaven, or, rather, he allows God to manifest himself in him.”

Robert Sarah (1945) Roman Catholic bishop

The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (2017)

Jakob Dylan photo

“If God is working I wish He’d say so
Maybe He don’t live here anymore”

Jakob Dylan (1969) singer and songwriter

"We Don’t Live Here Anymore"
Women + Country (2010)

George W. Bush photo
Pat Conroy photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“The slave is a man, "the image of God," but "a little lower than the angels;" possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears, of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely glorious idea of a God. It is such a being that is smitten and blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those characteristics of its victims which distinguish men from things, and persons from property. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark, under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over his victim.”

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

The Nature of Slavery. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester, December 1, 1850
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

Shane Claiborne photo
Julian (emperor) photo

“Are you not aware that all offerings whether great or small that are brought to the gods with piety have equal value, whereas without piety, I will not say hecatombs, but, by the gods, even the Olympian sacrifice of a thousand oxen is merely empty expenditure and nothing else?”

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

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

Angela of Foligno photo
Jane Roberts photo
Eric Hoffer photo

“God alone is satisfied with what He is and can proclaim: "I am what I am." Unlike God, man strives with all his might to be what he is not. He incessantly proclaims: "I am what I am not."”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 54
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

Jefferson Davis photo
Edmund Spenser photo

“To kerke the narre from God more farre,
Has bene an old-sayd sawe;
And he that strives to touche a starre
Oft stombles at a strawe.”

The Shepheardes Calender, July, line 97; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Charles Henry Fowler photo
Curt Flood photo
Paul of Tarsus photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Siddharth Katragadda photo

“Religion is god's population-control tool.”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 9
Dark Rooms (2002)

Michael von Faulhaber photo
David Hare photo

“To those whose god is honour, disgrace alone is sin.”

David Hare (1947) British writer

Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 7.
Misattributed

Homér photo

“But the gods give to mortals not everything at the same time.”

IV. 320 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Ben Carson photo

“I believe we have this enormous brains with the ability to process so much information for a purpose – because we were made in God's image, not in the image of an amoeba.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 130

Fulton J. Sheen photo
Cesar Chavez photo

“We don't know how God chooses martyrs. We do know that they give us the most precious gift they possess — their very lives.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

Indestructible Spirit Conference at La Paz, UFW Headquarters in Keene, California (11 January 1991)

Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Anne Brontë photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Ethan Allen photo
Peter Akinola photo

“Gods are condemned to live the dream of the imperishable.”

Giannina Braschi (1953) Puerto Rican writer

Empire of Dreams (prose poetry, 1988)

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Nile Kinnick photo
Miley Cyrus photo