God Quote Sunday (GQS)
I have decided to start a running series -- I will post a God-related quote (or two) on Sundays, although not necessarily every Sunday. I will try to drag the net deep and find some good ones oft'-neglected:
I have decided to start a running series -- I will post a God-related quote (or two) on Sundays, although not necessarily every Sunday. I will try to drag the net deep and find some good ones oft'-neglected:
- 10-15-06 -- GQS 1 -- Thomas Jefferson, "To talk of immaterial existence is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is...A single sense may indeed be sometimes decieved, but rarely: and never all our senses together, with their faculty of reasoning. They evidence realities; and there are enough of these for all the purposes of life, without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence." (Letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820; link)
- 10-29-06 -- GQS 2 -- Carl Sagan, "How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths." (Pale Blue Dot)
- 11-12-06 -- GQS 3 -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indignant at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves! Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God; but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears. Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the latest of virtues, which is uprightness. Backward they always gaze toward dark ages: then, indeed, were delusion and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God, and doubt was sin.
...You are young and wish for a child and marriage. But I ask you: Are you a man entitled to wish for a child? Are the victorious one, the self-conqueror, the commander of your sense, the master of your virtues? This I ask of you. Or is it the animal and need that speak out of your wish? Or loneliness? Or lack of peace with yourself?
...You pass over and beyond them: but the higher you ascend, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy. But most of all they hate those who fly.
...I teach you not the neighbor, but the friend. The friend should be the festival of the earth to you and an anticipation of the overman. I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must learn to be a sponge if one wants to be loved by hearts that overflow. I teach you the friend in whom the world stands completed, a bowl of goodness - the creating friend who always has a completed world to give away. And as the world rolled apart for him, it rolls together again in circles for him, as the becoming of the good through evil, as the becoming of purpose out of accident." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1891, full-text here)
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