Ah, but is there any better way to inflame passions than to ask that age old question: does God exist? Blessed are those that never have doubts about their god’s existence. Woe, the agnostic that does. S/he will get caught up in middle of wild discussions between believers and atheists who are firm in their belief that no god exists. Be it statesmen, great thinkers or the man on the street, where there are people, there is god. We all have an answer to the question: “Does God exist?”, and are ready to fight to defend our position.
My mother loved poetry and one of her favorite poems was “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. Like Mom, he revered God’s creations, paying homage to the beauty of trees. He laments in the last line of his poem: “poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.” Unlike Mom, I never cared much for poetry, but do love nature. I became interested in Joyce Kilmer’s poem when Codwise Avenue in my hometown was renamed to honor the man. No matter how many times I tried to memorize it, except for the last line, I always had to look it up. Thus, I keep it in my quote collection book right next to a poem by E. Y. Harburg, from his book: “Who Put The Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz”. It is his response to “Trees”, therefore, that aptly begins this list of quotes about God.
1) “But only fools like me, you see, can make a god who makes a tree.” E. Y. Harburg
2) “God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.” G. C. Lichtenberg
3) “What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?” Friedrich Nietzsche
4) “If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him.” Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet)
5) “If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.” Napoleon Bonaparte
6) “If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.” Edmond de Goncourt
7) “I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.” Isaac Asimov
8) “Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.” Francis Bacon
9) “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
10) “I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God – I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.” Walt Whitman
11) “God enters by a private door into every individual.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
12) “In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” Leo Tolstoy
13) “The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.” George Bernard Shaw
14) “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
15) “Where love is, there God is also.” Mohandas Gandhi
16) “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Victor Hugo
17) “The best way to know God is to love many things.” Vincent van Gogh
18) “Man-a creature made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.” Mark Twain
19) “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” Thomas Jefferson
20) “I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” Abraham Lincoln
21) “The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.” Henry Ward Beecher
22) “No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.” Daniel J. Boorstin
23) “Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.” H. L. Mencken
24) “God is clever, but not dishonest.” Albert Einstein
25) “Forgive, O Lord my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great one on me.” Robert Frost
Bonus Quotes for Writers:
“A blank page is God’s way of showing you how hard it is to be God.” Frank Baer
“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” Mark Twain
Does God exist? The question is not for me to answer for you. The only thing I can say with conviction, it does not matter if you are agnostic, atheist or have a firm belief in your religion: here comes that tsunami wave we all be running. You can quote me on that!
