John Brunner The Shockwave Rider
Bk. 1, Ch. "Paradox, Next Stop After the Boondocks
The Shockwave Rider (1975)
Stand-up performance at RIT (2005)
Context: It upset me that, five days after the hurricane hit down in New Orleans, the President's plan was for a day of prayer. I would have thought a truck of food. A day of prayer. Now, maybe I'm mistaken here and, again, I'm not a scientific expert, but isn't a hurricane officially an act of God? Isn't a day of prayer kind of redundant? Hasn't God already made up his mind on that sort of thing? So we do a day of prayer. The President has his stupid day of prayer. Three days later, Hurricane Rita hits. Somebody must have said something... something like, "is that all you got?"
John Brunner The Shockwave Rider
Bk. 1, Ch. "Paradox, Next Stop After the Boondocks
The Shockwave Rider (1975)
Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author
This has also appeared in paraphrased form as: "If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished."
The Paris Review interview (1981)
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher
Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 844
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer
What Must We Do To Be Saved? (1880) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38801/38801-h/38801-h.htm Section XI, "What Do You Propose?" <br class="br">Context: I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful.<br>Upon that rock I stand.<br>That he will not torture the forgiving.<br>Upon that rock I stand.<br>That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which honesty is a crime.<br>Upon that rock I stand.<br>The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come.<br>Upon that rock I stand.
Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason
1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Context: As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of Atheism — a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade.
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician
Speech in the House of Commons (20 November 1991) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108291 <br class="br">Post-Prime Ministerial
“We are grown-up infants, and God is a sort of 'wet nurse' to humanity.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India
Eminent Indians (1947)
“Your mind was made to know and love God.”
John Piper (1946) American writer
Source: Don't Waste Your Life
“Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.”
Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated
Source: Everything Is Illuminated