John Milton Quotes

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

Has it ever occurred to you that nothing occurs to God?

And you poor creatures--who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?

I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, "You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself." My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will.

I did this movie, Predestination, and it's one of my favorite movies I've ever made, because sci-fi really lets you talk about ideas in a way that's not pretentious.

Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.

Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it.

I don't believe in fate," he said carefully, "but... I do believe everything happens for a reason. That there is some plan, some meaning to this darkness we live in.

I tell you this: You always get what you create, and you are always creating. I do not make a judgment about the creations that you conjure, I simply empower you to conjure more-and more and more and more. If you don't like what you've just created, choose again. My job, as God, is to always give you that opportunity.

As I get older, I think that things have been pre-determined for me, whether I liked it or wanted it, wished for it, whatever, way before in some way. And with others, you do have a choice that you can change. And that choice that you make is still part of this grand scheme.

There are those who believe destiny rests at the feet of the gods, but the truth is that it confronts the conscious of man with a burning challenge.

The apprehension of necessity is an imitation of creation.

In a universe governed by God there are no chance events. Indeed, there is no such thing as chance. Chance does not exist. It is merely a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities. But chance itself has no power because it has no being. Chance is not an entity that can influence reality. Chance is not a thing. It is nothing.

When a child is born, the entire Universe has to shift and make room. Another entity capable of free will, and therefore capable of becoming God, has been born.

If God exists, how can we lay claim to freedom, since He is its beginning and its end?

Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.

There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.

It's not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice - with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.

I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.

Can omniscient God, who Knows the future, find The omnipotence to Change His future mind?

Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down.

Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?