If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
—Voltaire, 1764Quotes
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
—William Blake, 1793Without doubt God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it. He directs angels, man, animals, brute matter, in sum all created things—but each according to its nature—and man having been created free, he is freely led. This rule is truly the eternal law and in it we must believe.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1821One religion is as true as another.
—Robert Burton, 1621God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.
—Pablo Picasso, 1964I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
—Galileo Galilei, 1615To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
—Georges Bataille, 1957The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. I think that the worst thing you could say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death.
—Woody Allen, 1975Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
—George Washington, 1796So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, c. 1950The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.
—Ferdinand Magellan, c. 1510The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon, 1776The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
—Empedocles, c. 450 BC