quotations about God
I now conceive of God as in his universe. I conceive of creation as a growth. I conceive of him as making the universe somewhat as our spirit makes our body, shaping and changing and developing it by processes from within. The figures from the finite to the infinite are imperfect and misleading, but this is the figure which best represents to me my own thought of God's relation to the universe: Not that of an engineer who said one morning, " Go to, I will make a world," and in six days, or six thousand years, or six million thousand years, made one by forming it from without, as a potter forms the clay with skilful hand; but that of a Spirit who has been forever manifesting himself in the works of creation and beneficence in all the universe, one little work of whose wisdom and beneficence we are and we see. He who would see God must use the faculty with which God is seen; and if he would do this, he must let men who are rich in the faculty which perceives the invisible, -- which looks not at the things which are seen and are temporal, but at the things which are not seen and are eternal, -- guide, teach, inspire him.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
The nearer the Church the further from God.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
Sermon on the Nativity before James I
We are but a point, a single comma, and God is the literature of eternity.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of him but in broken and imperfect words. High above all he sits, sublimer than mountains, grander than storms, sweeter than blossoms and tender fruits, nobler than lords, truer than parents, more loving than lovers. His feet tread the lowest places of the earth; but his head is above all glory, and everywhere he is supreme.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Life of Reason
Who would imagine that the Deity conducts his providence similar to the detestable despots of this world? Oh horrible? most horrible impeachment of Divine Goodness!
ETHAN ALLEN
Reason: The Only Oracle of Man
God appears as a gentle rustling, not as a package of fire, floods, and earthquakes.
ERNST BLOCH
Traces
All nations believe the gods to be governed by a king; for men, who have made the gods after their own image, are ever hasty in ascribing to these celestial beings, human manners and human institutions.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
As long as God does not intervene in the contemporary universe in such a way as to violate physical laws, science has no way of knowing whether God exists or not. The belief or disbelief in such a Being is therefore a matter of faith.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
"Does God exist?", Salon, October 2, 2011
God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring--it is his will that we should love.
VICTOR HUGO
Toilers of the Sea
The soul of God is poured into the world through the thoughts of men.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
lecture, Nov. 18, 1862
Socrates and Plato agree that God is that which is one, hath its original from its own self, is of a singular subsistence, is one only being perfectly good; all these various names signifying goodness do all centre in mind; hence God is to be understood as that mind and intellect, which is a separate idea, that is to say, pure and unmixed of all matter, and not mingled with anything subject to passions.
PLUTARCH
"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies
God's universe is not like the American legal system. You do something, you pay for it.
THE DEVIL
Brimstone
I'm not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.
STEPHEN HAWKING
New Scientist, Apr. 26, 2007
I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith -- it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
No man will find God unless he seeks after God for God's own sake, loves him for himself, and not for the gifts which he may bestow.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
To know the face of God is to know madness.
LEOBEN CONOY
"Flesh and Bone", Battlestar Galactica
If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
There's something infinitely sad about little girls who grow up understanding (usually unconsciously) that if God is male, it's because male is the most valuable thing to be. This belief resonates in a thousand hidden ways in their lives. It slowly cripples girl children, and it cripples female adults.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
Ignorance of nature's ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord it over every aspect of human life. There were gods of love and war; of the sun, earth, and sky; of the oceans and rivers; of rain and thunderstorms; even of earthquakes and volcanoes. When the gods were pleased, mankind was treated to good weather, peace, and freedom from natural disaster and disease. When they were displeased, there came draught, war, pestilence, and epidemics. Since the connection of cause and effect in nature was invisible to their eyes, these gods appeared inscrutable, and people at their mercy.
STEPHEN HAWKING & LEONARD MLODINOW
The Grand Design