An apology for the devil: it must be remembered
that we have heard only one side of the case. God has written all the
books.
-- Samuel Butler
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great
ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
--Winston Churchill
God doesn't play dice with the universe. [Also quoted as I cannot believe
that God would choose to play dice with the universe.]
-- Albert Einstein
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean. [Also found as God is subtle,
but he is not malicious.]
-- Albert Einstein
Before God we are all equally wise -- and equally foolish.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment
and hope of reward after death.
-- Albert Einstein
What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation
of the world.
-- Albert Einstein
I maintain that cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest
incitement to scientific research.
-- Albert Einstein
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain
it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through
the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through
striving after rational knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein
I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
-- Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
-- Albert Einstein
All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All
these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting
it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual
towards freedom.
-- Albert Einstein
True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's
goodness and righteousness.
-- Albert Einstein
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
-- Albert Einstein
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which
based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion
that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism....
-- Albert Einstein
I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or
has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can
I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical
death; let feeble souls, from fear or ab surd egoism, cherish such thoughts.
I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the
awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world,
together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever
so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
-- Albert Einstein
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course,
powerful muscles, but no personality.
-- Albert Einstein
The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to
us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal
which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but
which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations. If
one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look
merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free
and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place
his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind. ... it is
only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of
the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself
in any other way.
-- Albert Einstein
I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble
driving force of scientific research.
-- Albert Einstein
Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends.
But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental
ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set
them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely
the most important function which religion has to form in the social
life of man.
-- Albert Einstein
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,
a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a
personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.
If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded
admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can
reveal it.
-- Albert Einstein
I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices
of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for
the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the
fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various
countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a
grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet.
-- Albert Einstein
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the
actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures
of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic
causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science.
[He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.]
My religiosity consists in a humble admiratation of the infinitely superior
spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and
transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of
the highest importance -- but for us, not for God.
-- Albert Einstein
The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein
lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling
is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state
of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really
exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant
beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties
-- this knowledge, this feeling ... that is the core of the true religious
sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among
profoundly religious men.
-- Albert Einstein
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the
firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side
of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him
neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent
cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God
interfering with the natural events could never be refuted, in the real
sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those
domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine
which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the
dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable
harm to human progress .... If it is one of the goals of religions to
liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings,
desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in another
sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover
(the) rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this
is not its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections disc covered
to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements.
It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold
that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely
this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey
to illusion. But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful
advances made in this domain, is moved by the profound reverence for
the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding
he achieves a far reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal
hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind
toward the grandeur of reason, incarnate in existence, and which, in
its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however,
appears to me to be religious in the highest sense of the word. And
so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse
of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious
spiritualization of our understanding of life.
-- Albert Einstein
Watch the stars, and from them learn. To the Master's honor all must
turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
-- Albert Einstein
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend
only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling
of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing
to do with mysticism
-- Albert Einstein
The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor
tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy
of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
-- Albert Einstein
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation,
whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is
but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual
survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts
through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
--Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth
and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
-- Albert Einstein
I considered atheism, but there weren't enough holidays.
Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by
not committing them?
-- Jules Feiffer
I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects
or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely
above it.
--Benjamin Franklin
I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded
than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall
not be examined on what we thought but what we did.
--Benjamin Franklin [letter to his father, 1738]
If we look back into history for the character of the present sects
in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been
persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians
thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it
on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed
persecution in the Roman Catholic Church, but practiced it upon the
Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice
themselves both here (England) and in New England.
--Benjamin Franklin
I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean
real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making
long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise
men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.
--Benjamin Franklin
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
-- Aldous Huxley
Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there
is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded
faith.
--Thomas Jefferson
But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the
Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who
professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for
enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
--Thomas Jefferson [to S. Kercheval, 1810]
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the
purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible
to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose.
--Thomas Jefferson [to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814]
But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own
country was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the
rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from
the dross of his biographers, and as separable as the diamond from the
dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality
which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable
he did not live to fill up... The establishment of the innocent and
genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from
the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems*,
invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever
uttered by him, is a most desirable object...
*eg. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation
of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible
ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original
sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc.
--Thomas Jefferson [to W. Short, Oct. 31, 1819]
It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all
his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism;
he preaches the efficacy of repentence toward forgiveness of sin; I
require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it. Among the sayings
and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages
of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence;
and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much
untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that
such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate,
therefore, the gold from the dross; restore him to the former, and leave
the latter to the stupidity of some, the roguery of others of his disciples.
Of this band of dupes and imposters, Paul was the great Coryphaeus,
and the first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus.
--Thomas Jefferson [to W. Short, 1820]
The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more
dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and
religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the
grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel
and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God
of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That
Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically
speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned
than myself in that lore.
--Thomas Jefferson [to Story, Aug. 4, 1820]
The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are
those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted
them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible,
and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come,
when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father,
in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation
of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
--Thomas Jefferson [to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823]
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or
no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
--Thomas Jefferson
Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom
a slaughter-house.
--Thomas Jefferson [to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822]
I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted
to make a convert nor wished to change another's creed. I have judged
of others' religion by their lives, for it is from our lives and not
from our words that our religion must be read. By the same test must
the world judge me.
--Thomas Jefferson
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe
in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and
yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes
the craft, the power and the profit of the priests.
--Thomas Jefferson [to John Adams, 1803]
Which is it: is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's blunders?
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the
Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant
church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
-- Thomas Paine
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the
edge, about to jump off. so I ran over and said Stop! Don't do it! Why
shouldn't I? he said. I said, Well, there's so much to live for! He
said, Like what? I said, Well... are you religious or atheist? He said,
Religious. I said, Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist? He said, Christian.
I said, Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant? He said, Protestant.
I said, Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist? He said, Baptist! I
said, Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of
the Lord? He said, Baptist Church of God! I said, Me too! Are you original
Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God? He
said, Reformed Baptist Church of God! I said, Me too! Are you Reformed
Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church
of God, reformation of 1915? He said, Reformed Baptist Church of God,
reformation of 1915! I said, Die, heretic scum, and pushed him off.
-- Emo Phillips
Allors c'est ca l'Enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru...Vous vous rappelez:
le soufre, le bucher, le gril...Ah! quelle plaisanterie, Pas besoin
de gril, l'Enfer c'est les Autres.
--Jean-Paul Sartre
[So that's what Hell is: I'd never have believed it...Do you remember,
brimstone, the stake, the gridiron?...What a joke! No need of a gridiron,
Hell is other people.]
In the beginning there was nothing. God said, Let there be light. And
there was still nothing, but everybody could see it.
-- Dave Thomas, SCTV
In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he
Him.
-- Jethro Tull, Aqualung
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
-- Voltaire
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
-- Voltaire
Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not
made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
-- Voltaire
When the gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers.
-- Oscar Wilde
If triangles had a god, he'd have three sides.
-- Yiddish proverb
