GOD QUOTES XXI

quotations about God

It makes a great deal of difference what sort of God men believe in.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


The rule of God is not tyranny, for it does not partake of a political or governmental character -- it is not a rule of authority. God is not a governor of the universe, for a governor rules over those of a like nature with himself, and exercises a political and judicial power, while God exercises a creative, a preserving, and a determinative power of an altogether different kind. If I am a servant of God, I am under no tyranny; for God does not govern, but supports, sustains, and directs me.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

Remarks on the Science of History


Man from his own existence knows the existence of a Creator; from his own attributes, he knows the attributes of his maker; from the control which he has over his own kingdom, he knows the control that God exercises over all the world.

MUHAMMAD AL-GHAZALI

The Alchemy of Happiness


The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

RICHARD DAWKINS

The God Delusion

Tags: Richard Dawkins


God, wishing His elect to realize their own misery, often temporarily withdraws His favours: no more is needed to prove to us in a very short time what we really are.

TERESA OF AVILA

The Interior Castle

Tags: Teresa of Avila


Isn't it time now for us to declare that the emperor is wearing no clothes? When are we going to admit that we believe in a God of extraordinary contradictions, who we say loves and who we say kills, who we say creates and who we say destroys, who we say accepts and who we say rejects, who we say rewards and who we say punishes, who we say brings us good and who we say visits evil upon us, who we say is the All in All and who we say is separate from everything, who we say is Everywhere Present and who we say is not in us and that we are not?

NEALE DONALD WALSCH

Tomorrow's God


I ask no truer image of my Heavenly Father than I find reflected in my own heart -- all loving, all forgiving.

HOSEA BALLOU

Treasury of Thought


If you and I have not seen God, we cannot bear witness to God.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott


The divine qualities of man are but the slightest hints, the faintest intimations, of the attributes of God.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

The Night of the Iguana


I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


If there is a God what the hell is He for?

WILLIAM FAULKNER

As I Lay Dying

Tags: William Faulkner


We can approach belief from an intellectual path, but in the end, God must be taken on faith. Proofs are for things of this world, things in time and of time, not beyond time.

DEAN KOONTZ

Brother Odd

Tags: Dean Koontz


I don't want my kids growing up with the image of God that I had -- Plato's white grandfatherly god -- because that god is not a very good father. When it comes down to it, you can't trust him with your kids.

WM. PAUL YOUNG

"The Love Shack", Christianity Today, Mar. 4, 2013


But if God was in a continual vigilance, either there was something wanting to make him happy, or else his beatitude was perfectly complete; but according to neither of these can God be said to be blessed; not according to the first, for if there be any deficiency there is no perfect bliss; not according to the second, for, if there be nothing wanting to the felicity of God, it must be a needless enterprise for him to busy himself in human affairs. And how can it be supposed that God administers by his own providence human concerns, when to vain and trifling persons prosperous things happen, to great and high adverse?

PLUTARCH

"What is God?", Essays & Miscellanies

Tags: Plutarch


In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.

JOHN ORTBERG

God Is Closer Than You Think

Tags: John Ortberg


God is able to do more than man can understand.

THOMAS À KEMPIS

Imitation of Christ

Tags: Thomas A Kempis


Since ancient times, the philosophers' secret has always been this: we know that God does not exist, or, at least, if he does, he's utterly indifferent to our individual affairs--but we can't let the rabble know that; it's the fear of God, the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward, that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.

ROBERT J. SAWYER

Calculating God

Tags: Robert J. Sawyer


What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

STEPHEN HAWKING

Der Spiegel, Oct. 17, 1988


God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.

J. L. MACKIE

Evil and Omnipotence

Tags: J. L. Mackie