God

"How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know."

"To everyone God is the kind of God he believes in."

"Only what is fated to die is capable of living. Only what dies lives. Why do you think Christ was killed? They killed him to prove that he wasn’t a god. But in killing him, they immortalized the perishable and transformed man into a god."

"The gods envy me because they cannot die."

"Goddes love is unescapable as nature's environment, which if a man ignore or think to thrust it off he is the ill-natured fool that runneth on to death."

"That we devote ourselves to God is seen In living just as though no God there were."

"God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations."

"God's in His Heaven — All's right with the world!"

"All service is the same with God, With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first."

"All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him."

"Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others."

"When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which—of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God."

"According to mythological thinking, God has his domicile in heaven. What is the meaning of this statement? The meaning is quite clear. In a crude manner it expresses the idea that God is beyond the world, that He is transcendent. The thinking which is not yet capable of forming the abstract idea of transcendence expresses its intention in the category of space."

"“Don’t you know everything?” God smiled. “No, I outgrew that trick long ago. You can’t imagine how boring it was.”"

"God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion."

"There is no god but God! — to prayer — lo! God is great!"

"“It’s not my job to be God’s lawyer,...I’m his salesman. I do believe he’s the greatest thing that ever existed, and I encourage people to get to know him without trying to explain what he’s doing or why.”"

"Our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us ... that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves. For what man is not disposed to rest in himself? Who, in fact, does not thus rest, so long as he is unknown to himself; that is, so long as he is contented with his own endowments, and unconscious or unmindful of his misery? Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him."

"Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God."

"God, or is it Mr. G to me?"

"The will of God is the worst thing in the world. But obeying his will is the only good thing in the world."

"Except during my childhood, when I was probably influenced by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of God with a flowing white beard, I have never tried to project the Creator in any kind of human likeness. The vociferous debates about whether God is male or female seem ridiculous to me. I think of God as an omnipotent and omniscient presence, a spirit that permeates the universe, the essence of truth, nature, being, and life. To me, these are profound and indescribable concepts that seem to be trivialized when expressed in words."

"Although every believing Christian understands that God guides our steps, fewer and fewer emphasize the point. A God working actively in the world makes us uneasy. We tend to like our God distant and a bit malleable, ready to bend to every new human idea. A God with a will of his own is too scary, and, besides, he might get in the way of our satisfaction of immediate desire."

"Promises made to others in God's name engage the divine honor, fidelity, truthfulness, and authority. They must be respected in justice. To be unfaithful to them is to misuse God's name and in some way to make God out to be a liar. (1 John 1:10)"

"Our problem is to perfect our individuality, and then we return to God, Our spirit and soul, or individuality, are joined to Him. ... the return of the soul is the return of the image to that which imagined it, and the consciousness of an individual—its record, written in mind—could not be destroyed without destroying part of God Himself. When a soul returns to God it becomes aware of itself not only as a part of God, but as a part of every other soul, and everything."

"God desired to express Himself, and He desired companionship. Therefore, He projected from Himself the cosmos and souls. ... Souls were created for companionship with God. The pattern used was that of God Himself: spirit, mind, individuality; cause, action, effect. ... Thus the soul consisted of two states of consciousness: that of the spirit, bearing a knowledge of its identity with God, and that of the new individual, bearing a knowledge of everything it experienced. The plan for the soul was a cycle of experience, unlimited in scope and duration, in which the new individual would come to know creation in all its aspects, at the discretion of will. The cycle would be completed when the desire of will was no longer different from the thought of God. The consciousness of the new individual would then merge with its spiritual consciousness of identity with God, and the soul would return to its source as the companion it was intended to be. In this state the soul would retain its consciousness of a separate individuality and would be aware that of its own free will it now acted as a part of God, not diverting mind force because it was in agreement with the action toward which this force was directed. Until this state was reached the soul would not be a companion in the true sense of the word."

"True religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being. Its noblest influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity."

"Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men’s aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God."

"I tell you this, that you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am. Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf — kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now."

"If [people] wish to love God, they [must] be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion."

"God can only set in motion: He cannot control the things he has made."

"First of all you – you fucking fake Christians – don’t fucking question my Christianity. I grew up in the church. My grandfather was a minister, who is with God now and talks to me in my dreams from God’s corner office. I am a former Sunday school teacher. I taught the Bible to children and showed them how to love God and invite him into their hearts. I believe in God – but I don’t fear him. God is my best friend. God is my ally. God is my boyfriend. God is my best fag. I am God’s fag hag cuz didn’t you know, God is a big fag. Serious bottom too. Butch in the streets, femme in the sheets. That is my God. God is my biggest fan. God gets me, dude."

"Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videantur."

"Cicero, De legibus, book 3"

"God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays."

"In most cases we attach ourselves to God in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better."

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him."

"The rash assertion that ‘God made man in His own image’ is ticking like a time bomb at the foundations of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods."

"I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her."

"Haven’t you ever watched ants struggling with a load too big for them? How much did you care? Even if, like God, you marked the fall of every sparrow, you might simply be conducting a survey or expressing colossal boredom, like the people who delight in measuring things."

"Thou shalt have one God only; who Would be at the expense of two?"

"The God who appears to me is the comforter of the poor and their avenger in world history. This avenger of the poor is the God I love."

"Only the idea of God gives me the confidence that morality will become reality on earth. And because I cannot live without this confidence, I cannot live without God."

"Reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page."

"God is dead not because He doesn't exist, but because we live, play, procreate, govern, and die as though He doesn't."

"Oppressed and oppressors cannot possibly mean the same thing when they speak of God. The God of the oppressed is a God of revolution who breaks the chains of slavery. The oppressors' God is a God of slavery and must be destroyed along with the oppressors."

"God never meant that man should scale the Heavens By strides of human wisdom. In his works, Though wondrous, he commands us in his word To seek him rather where his mercy shines."

"But who with filial confidence inspired, Can lift to Heaven an unpresumptuous eye, And smiling say, My Father made them all."

"Acquaint thyself with God, if thou would'st taste His works. Admitted once to his embrace, Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before: Thine eye shall be instructed; and thine heart Made pure shall relish with divine delight Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought."

"I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose."