So much of the world's suffering results from the sinful action or inaction of ourselves and others. For example, people look at a famine and wonder where God is, but the world produces enough food for each person to have 3,000 calories a day. It's our own irresponsibility and self-centeredness that prevents people from getting fed.
We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them.
Before man's fall the rose was born,St. Ambrose says, without the thorn;But for man's fault then was the thornWithout the fragrant rose-bud born; But ne'er the rose without the thorn.
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
Aircraft do not crash of themselves. They come to grief because men are foolish, or vain, or lazy, or irresolute or reckless. One crash in a thousand may be unavoidable because God wills it so - not more than that.
Humankind's chief fault is that they have so many small ones.
The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind.
Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious.
But with man, — by Hercules! most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.
The sky and the earth and the waters and the things that are in them, the fishes, and the birds and the trees are not evil. All these are good; it is evil men who make this evil world.
We must not forget that it wasn't the Jews that put him on the cross, and it wasn't the Romans. It was my sins, it was your sins, the sins of this world.
In a very real sense, the suffering of this world was created by man himself.
There are no evils in Nature, there are only evils of Man.
Anything we have not done in the next century will be our own fault because we have so many resources to do it.
If there are gods, why is the world so full of pain and injustice?' 'Because of men like you.
If a man is unhappy, remember that his unhappiness is his own fault, for God made all men to be happy.
