And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air-conditioning. Amiri Baraka, American poet & dramatist
Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God. Heywood Broun
God and Nature do nothing in vain. Auctoritates Aristotelis
It seem’d like Omnipresence! God, methought,
Had built him there a Temple: the whole World
Seem’d imag’d in its vast circumference:
No wish profan’d my overwhelmed heart.
Blest hour! It was a luxury – to be! Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement
God is not a God of explanation primarily; he’s a God of love. Father George Coyne, interview Professor Richard Dawkins
It has been said that the highest praise of God consists in the denial of Him by the atheist, who finds creation so perfect that he can dispense with a creator. Marcel Proust
It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him: for the one is unbelief, the other is contumely: and certainly superstition is the reproach of the deity. Francis Bacon, Of Superstition
It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us. Barack Obama, Notre Dame University 2009
Pray that I can be an instrument of God. Barack Obama
Claire: How do you know you’re ... God?
Earl of Gurney: Simple. When I pray to Him I find I’m talking to myself. Peter Barnes, The Ruling Class, 1969
God is love, but get it in writing. Gypsy Rose Lee aka Rose Louise Hovock, attributed
There is a God. Sarah Palin, cited Alexandra Pelosi, Right America Feeling Wronged
I do not feel obliged to believe God endowed man with reason and intellect and intended for him to forgo their use. Galileo Galilei
Secrets of the incomprehensible wisdom of God, unknown to any besides Himself! Man, sprung up only of a few days, wants to penetrate, and to set bounds to it. Who is it that hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counselor? Jeanne Guyon
God will not take shelter behind a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither a schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in Heaven. George MacDonald
Without God man has no reference point to define himself. Twentieth century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity. R C Sproul
The turning point in our lives is when we stop seeking the God we want and start seeking the God who is. Patrick Morley
Whoever thinks that the understanding of things Divine rests upon strict proofs has in his thought narrowed down the wideness of God’s mercy. Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error
We may seek God by our intellect, but we only can find him with our heart. Cotvos
We need to go to war in the name of God – right now they’re being told that George Bush of all people is a holy man ... There’s this entanglement of politics and religion. Jesus Camp 2006, directors Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, Mike Papantonio show
I can’t help praising the Lord. As I go along the street, I lift up one foot, and it seems to say ‘Glory’; and I lift up the other, and it seems to say ‘Amen’; and so they keep up like that all the time I am walking. Billy Bray, cited William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today. Albert Camus
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life as if there isn’t and die to find out there is. Albert Camus
The real attitude of sin in the heart towards God is that of being without God; it is pride, the worship of myself, that is the great atheistic fact in human life. Oswald Chambers
What if God was One of Us? Joan Osborne, song
Ever since I’ve been a little girl I’ve felt the presence of God in my life. It’s a gift of grace that has for me been incredibly sustaining, but really ever since I was a child, I’ve felt the enveloping love and support of God. Hillary Clinton
I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea. Rene Descartes
The atheist explanation flounders when confronted with all these facts: the complexity of the cell, the fine-tuning of universe, the fact of morality, the depth of human evil, the reality of morality in the world – what about the God explanation? Denish D’Souza v Christopher Hitchens: The God Debate
The fact of religious experience ... Religion serves current needs and wants ... God is in fact the answer to the problem. ibid.
God is in the details. Miles van der Rohe, New York Times 19th August 1969
Now I, to comfort him, bid him a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. William Shakespeare, Henry V II iii 19-21
O God, thy arm was here,
And not to us, but to thy arm alone
Ascribe we all. William Shakespeare, Henry V IV viii 106-108
When you say that if I deny, that the operations of seeing, hearing, attending, wishing etc. can be ascribed to God, or that they exist in Him in any eminent fashion, you do not know what sort of God mine is; I suspect that you believe there is no greater perfection than such as can be explained by the aforesaid attributes. I am not astonished; for I believe that, if a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. Thus each would ascribe to God its own attributes, would assume itself to be like God, and look on everything else as ill-shaped.
The briefness of a letter and want of time do not allow me to enter into my opinion on the divine nature, or the questions you have propounded. Besides, suggesting difficulties is not the same as producing reasons. That we do many things in the world from conjecture is true, but that our redactions are based on conjecture is false. In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. A man would perish of hunger and thirst, if he refused to eat or drink, till he had obtained positive proof that food and drink would be good for him. But in philosophic reflection this is not so. On the contrary, we must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.
Again, we cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms. Baruch Spinoza
My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul, and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers, though the phraseology may be different; I will even venture to affirm that I agree with all the ancient Hebrews, in so far as one may judge from their traditions, though these are in many ways corrupted. The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous.
As regards miracles, I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance. Baruch Spinoza