Herbert Butterfield Quotes

Some people believe God is involved in every little decision we make. Some people believe you're given the free will to make the decisions. Sometimes people believe God is not involved at all.

Man proposes, but God disposes.

Man plans, but God decides.

God just has a way of working things out the way he wants to and you have no say in that.

Man appoints, and God disappoints.

Life is in God's hand.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

God's role in superintending our world and our lives is neither absentee landlord nor micromanager.

Whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me.

In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

it was God's act and not mine.

God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid.

God is the ruler of history. His times are well chosen The Roman Empire was an instrument in his hand. And so are the nations of the modern world.

And if you believe that we really have free will, then you know that God can't really control us. And since God can't control us, all God does is watch and change channels when He gets bored.

That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God.

Regardless of the cause, none of your problems could happen without God's permission.

Nothing, therefore, happens unless the Omnipotent wills it to happen. He either permits it to happen, or He brings it about Himself.

I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.

Events of all sorts creep or fly exactly as God pleases.

If you go back through 2000 years, I guess luck, Marx, and God have made history, the three of them together.

Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.

I think we can affect our own fates, but there's also a powerful energy that's the universe or God or whatever your unconscious recognizes that helps along your way.

History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.