A Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

And what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Quote Topics

Beast Could Enter Exist God Head Idea Man Marvel Marvelous Necessity Really Savage Should Strange Vicious Would Would Be

Quote Author

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Russian - Novelist
November 11, 1821 - February 9, 1881

The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something [God] exists, could scarcely suggest itself to Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it, and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.

Soren Kierkegaard

God is Godless. God is an idea that we have, another construct, a prop, which doesn't suggest that God doesn't exist. God is existence. But your idea of God and existence are two different things at the moment.

Frederick Lenz

If God be an infinite being, there cannot be, either in the present or future world, any relative proportion between man and his God. Thus, the idea of God can never enter the human mind.

Baron d'Holbach

When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God’s idea of God, and God’s idea of God is Christ

E. Stanley Jones

Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.

Sherman Alexie

I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.

Elizabeth Gilbert

What we call God's justice is only man's idea of what he would do if he were God.

Elbert Hubbard

Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbour, but my neighbour. For don't we often make this mistake as regards people who are still alive -- who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture -- almost the précis -- we've made of him in our own minds? And he has to depart from it pretty widely before we even notice the fact.

C. S. Lewis

Where we go wrong is that we bring along some ready-made idea of God, wherever we may have learned it, and then try to make Jesus Christ fit in with that idea of God. But if we take the idea of a revelation of God in Christ seriously, then we must be willing to have our understanding of God corrected and even revolutionized by what we learn in Jesus Christ.

John Macquarrie

What is the result of our investigation of the Moslem idea of God? Is the statement of the Koran true, "Your God and our God is the same"? In as far as Moslems are monotheists and in as far as Allah has many of the attributes of Jehovah we cannot put Him with the false gods. But neither can there be any doubt that Mohammed's conception of God is inadequate, incomplete, barren and grievously distorted. It is vastly inferior to the Christian idea of the Godhead and also inferior to the Old Testament idea of God.

Samuel Marinus Zwemer

I think my idea of God was much more directive than my idea of God now, that is, a God who had one plan in mind for me, perhaps, and my job was to find out what it was and obey.

Barbara Brown Taylor

Something which is against natural laws seems to me rather out of the question because it would be a depressive idea about God. It would make God smaller than he must be assumed. When he stated that these laws hold, then they hold, and he wouldn't make exceptions. This is too human an idea. Humans do such things, but not God.

Max Born

What is the idea of God in heaven? Materialism. The Vedantic idea is the infinite principle of God embodied in every one of us. God sitting up on a cloud! Think of the utter blasphemy of it! It is materialism - downright materialism. When babies think this way, it may be all right, but when grown - up men try to teach such things, it is downright disgusting - that is what it is. It is all matter, all body idea, the gross idea, the sense idea. Every bit of it is clay and nothing but clay. Is that religion?

Swami Vivekananda

Christianity, righty understood, is utterly unlike religion that man invents. It is so completely contrary to the way man does things that it must have come from God. Take Christmas, for example; only God could have thought of that. When man invents a super being, he comes up with a Superman, or a Captain Marvel. God gives the world a baby.

Richard Halverson

The idea of universal human rights may not seem as weird to some people as the idea of a personal God, but it is still a metaphysical idea that liberalism, at least as we know it, couldn't really survive without.