Maimonides Quotes

Among the attributes of God, although they are equal, mercy shines with even more brilliance than justice.

I rarely speak about God. To God yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But open discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.

It connects with the theologians' point that you can say what God is not, but not (easily) what He is.

After all, God is God because he remembers.

If a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. Thus each would ascribe to God its own attributes, would assume itself to be like God, and look on everything else as ill-shaped.

We know then the existence and nature of the finite, because we also are finite and have extension. We know the existence of the infinite and are ignorant of its nature, because it has extension like us, but not limits like us. But we know neither the existence nor the nature of God, because he has neither extension nor limits.

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me - the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love - He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us - nature did it all - not the gods of the religions.

A changeable God would be no God.

The sum total or Ishwara may be said to be All-good, Almighty, and Omniscient. These are obvious qualities, and need no argument to prove, from the very fact of totality.

There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.

If God were only mighty, we would Salute Him. But since he is Merciful and Mighty, we can approach Him.

If we take away any of the attributes of God, we do not weaken God but we weaken our concept of God.

Though Gods attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.

God has a thousand names, or rather He is Nameless.

While love is one of God's attributes, it's not his only attribute. God is also holy and just.

And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen.

A Christian should know that God is a Creator, that God is an entity that is all-powerful and all knowledgeable, God is everywhere and God is an entity filled with grace, love, compassion and forgiveness, that Jesus is the son of God and Jesus came on earth to explain to people in a very revolutionary way the nature of God, that God was not a stern judge who was keeping track of 600 or so rules and regulations that you had to keep in order to be acceptable to God.

The love of God is no human projection, but the wrath of God is. In fact, what we call the wrath of God is really the love of God experienced by a fool.

Nature is the chart of God, mapping out all His attributes.

We are compelled by the theory of God's already achieved perfection to make Him a devil as well as a god, because of the existenceof evil. The god of love, if omnipotent and omniscient, must be the god of cancer and epilepsy as well.... Whoever admits that anything living is evil must either believe that God is malignantly capable of creating evil, or else believe that God has made many mistakes in His attempts to make a perfect being.

To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infiniteness, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility.

God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.

Patience is God's nature.

God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision.