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What preoccupies us, then, is not God as a fact of nature, but as a fabrication useful for a God-fearing society. God himself becomes not a power but an image.
-Daniel J. Boorstin
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To speak of God, to think of God, is in every respect to show what one is made of. I have always wagered against God and I regard the little that I have won in this world as simply the outcome of this bet. However paltry may have been the stake (my life) I am conscious of having won to the full. Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God!
-Andre Breton
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All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.
-Anita Brookner
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God hears no more than the heart speaks; and if the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf.
-Thomas Brooks
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And first Satan's endeavours have ever been, and they cease not yet to instill a belief in the minde of man, There is no God at all. . . . that the necessity of his entity dependeth upon ours, and is but a Politicall Chymera. . . . Where he succeeds not thus high, he labours to introduce a secondary and deductive Atheisme; that although, men concede there is a God, yet . . . that he intendeth only the care of the species or common natures, but letteth loose the guard of individuals, and single existencies therein: That he looks not below the Moon, but hath designed the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferiour deputations. To promote which apprehensions or empuzzell their due conceptions, he casteth in the notions of fate, destiny, fortune, chance and necessity. . . . Whereby extinguishing in mindes the compensation of vertue and vice, the hope and fear of heaven or hell; they comply in their actions unto the drift of his delusions. . . .
-Sir Thomas Browne
Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1650)
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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.
-Martin Buber
I and Thou, 1923
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How would man exist if God did not need him, and how would you exist? You need God in order to be, and God needs you
-Martin Buber
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It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
-Frederick Buechner
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For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
-Charles Bukowski
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If someone were to prove to me -- right this minute -- that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior.
-Luis Bunuel
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I think there are innumerable gods. What we on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating through human consciousness control events.
-William S. Burroughs
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If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
-Samuel Butler
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The one thing that a fish can never find is water; and the one thing that man can never find is God.
-Eric Butterworth
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God can only do for you what He can do through you.
-Eric Butterworth
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Fundamentalists believe Jesus was God becoming man. I believe that Jesus was man becoming God.
-Eric Butterworth
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Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.
-Elias Canetti
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Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place.
-Angela Carter
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When I was young, I said to God, god, tell me the mystery of the universe. But God answered, that knowledge is for me alone. So I said, god, tell me the mystery of the peanut. Then God said, well, George, that's more nearly your size.
-George Washington Carver
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The history of all the great characters of the Bible is summed up in this one sentence: They acquainted themselves with God, and acquiesced His will in all things.
-Richard Cecil
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Man appoints, and God disappoints.
-Miguel de Cervantes
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Though God's attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.
-Miguel de Cervantes
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Among the attributes of God, although they are equal, mercy shines with even more brilliance than justice.
-Miguel de Cervantes
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Truth to me was dead, God had never lived, life was full of pain, and death was the end of life. As a young Atheist, I sincerely believed that man had created God to fill the gaps in knowledge that would never be spanned by experience, reason, or science. In 1983 the God who pursues those who deny him interrupted my existence, he captured my soul with raw love. Two decades later, God's tangible friendship still amazes me. To deny his existence I'd have to first deny my own.
-Alicia Britt Chole
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If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
-E. M. Cioran
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Books about God
