Genesis Quotes

“Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.”
― Abigail Adams

“Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bare the genesis of a new world, a new forest.”
― Mike Norton, White Mountain

“A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. It was hardly a tune. But it was beyond comparison, the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer's icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it.”
― peter kreeft, Jesus-Shock

“On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat

“We think ourselves possessed, or at least we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact. There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny, or to doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel. In England itself, it is punished by boring through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not much better; even in our Massachusetts, which, I believe, upon the whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century, repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemies upon any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any arguments for investigation into the divine authority of those books? Who would run the risk of translatingVolney'sRecherches Nouvelles?Who would run the risk of translatingDupuis?But I cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws... but as long as they continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed.

{Letter toThomas Jefferson,January 23, 1825}”
― John Adams, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson & Abigail & John Adams

“[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis - only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.
(pg. 44, "The Unsettling of America" )”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“It was cold out here in this world beyond childhood.”
― Leslie W.P. Garland, The Bat (The Red Grouse Tales) - A coming of age story involving a search after truth, doubt and a bat!

“Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man.”
― Clarence Darrow

“Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came to being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old.

These dates are incorrect.

Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760BC. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508BC.

These suggestions are also incorrect.

Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004BC. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004BC, at exactly 9.00 a.m., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour.

The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet.”
― Terry Pratchett

“For, to my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.
(on commenting the text of Genesis 1:6)”
― John Calvin

“I think that the most essential thing is that God didn’t want Adam to be alone. God wanted Adam to be able to love someone. To have a relationship that reflected God’s own love. And so he made Eve so that Adam could love her. So that Adam could be fully human. And when he made Eve, he gave her the miraculous capacity to love Adam back. Do you ever think about how crazy that is? – Our miraculous capacity to love? We don’t know why, we don’t know how, but our hearts and souls are drawn to others. We weren’t made to be alone. We were made to love. And when we love, we automatically know God without even trying to, because God is love. If we love as he made us to love-if we love with our hearts instead of our criteria- then we simply are love.”
― Kelly Quindlen, Her Name in the Sky

“Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.”
― Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day

“I would urge us to be not too certain of our accustomed ways of looking at Genesis, and to open ourselves to the wisdom of the God-bearing men of the past who have devoted so much intellectual effort to understanding the text of Genesis as it was meant to be understood. These Holy Fathers are our key to understanding Genesis.”
― Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation and Early Man: The Orthodox Christian Vision

“The Shield was another of the Fear's names. According to Laughter, it means he shields the seed of Abraham the way a man starting a fire shields the flame. When Sarah was about to die childless, the Fear gave her a son. When Abraham was about to slaughter the son, the Fear gave him the ram. He is always shielding us like a guttering wick, Laughter said, because the fire he is trying to start with us is a fire that the whole world will live to warm its hands at. It is a fire in the dark that will light the whole world home.”
― Frederick Buechner, The Son of Laughter

“Consciousness is the feel of accessing memory.”
― Bernard Beckett

“Try to imagine this formless, liquid abyss of many waters and surfaces. With and within this awesome, abysmal substance, God Mother creates universes. We are made from this stuff, literally! And we literally live, move, and have our being in this fathomless, multi-dimensional matrix.”
― Stefan Emunds, Genesis

“Demon” means “knowledge” in Greek. “Science” means “knowledge” in Latin. A jurisdictional dispute is exposed, even if we look no further.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“As we reread Genesis 2...we immediately understand WHAT is 'crafty' about the serpent's question in Genesis 3. God did NOT in fact say in Genesis 2, 'You MUST NOT EAT from any tree in the garden' (3:1). What God did say was almost exactly the opposite: 'You ARE FREE TO EAT from any tree in the garden' (except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, 2:16). The vocabulary of God in Genesis 2 indicates freedom and blessing. The vocabulary of the serpent in Genesis 3 indicates prohibition and restriction. The serpent's ploy is to suggest to the woman that God is really not so good after all. He shifts attention away from all that God in his generosity has provided for his creatures in creation and onto the one thing that God has for the moment explicitly withheld.”
― Iain Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters

“Thus the great wind, the afflatus, gave breath and turbulence to all life; and inspiration clung to the minds and hearts of men.”
― Richard Beckham II

“The Genesis declaration carries the central truth that each human person is a precious individual, whether strong or weak, rich or poor, able-bodied or handicapped, intellectually brilliant or limited, beautiful or plain.”
― Os Guinness, The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom

“I was Noblest of all creatures,
I was the Successor,
I was made to believe I am Dust &
I committed a Sin!”
― Aiyaz Uddin, The Inward Journey

“Then the gods realized they must create substitutes for themselves: men. But how? For them to be truly alive, a god must die.”
― Roberto Calasso, La Tavoletta dei Destini

“The realized soul is the only one who can reveal the truth and origin of God to another soul seeking God, because only the one who comes from God can reach God in the state of realization.”
― Aiyaz Uddin

“Перад тым як стварыць чалавека, была нарада паміж Богам Айцом, Духам і Сынам. Бог кажа: «Трэба стварыць чалавека, па вобразе і па падабенстве да нас». Узяў Бог гліны, зляпіў чалавека і хукнуў. Як хукнуў, чалавек зараз і ажыў. Пачаў ён хадзіць, разглядацца. Ды падобнага да сябе нікога не бачыць. Маркотна стала Адаму — першы чалавек называўся Адамам. Нідзе не прыткнецца, бедны. Ходзіць, як пасля добрай выпіўкі, шукаючы, каб чым апахмяліцца. Пазіраў на яго Бог, пазіраў ды кажа: «Нядобра чалавеку быць аднаму — трэба ажаніць яго». Дзяўчат жа на свеце не было, у сваты яго не павязеш. Трэба іншую раду даваць. Натупаўся Адам, ходзячы па зямлі, і моцна заснуў. Вось тады Бог узяў з яго рабро, з рабра выштукаваў кабету і назваў яе — Ева. Прачнуўся Адам ды як глянуў на яе, дык увесь і прасвятлеўся. А Бог пазірае ды цешыцца. «Бяры, — кажа, — яе: няхай яна будзе табе за жонку. Жывеце, — кажа, — у згодзе, у добрым ладзе, не сварыцеся, не біцеся. А ты, Ева, даглядай свайго мужа. Вось гэта ўсё, што вы бачыце, гэта ўсё ваша. Будзьце ж гаспадарамі над усім, што на зямлі. Не забывайце Бога, у царкву хадзіце. На папа і на дзяка таксама не забывайцеся, бо яны за вас мяне моляць».”
― Якуб Колас, На ростанях

“This is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” proclaims connectedness, equality, and mutuality, not dominance or a hierarchy of power.”
― Ngina Otiende, Courage: Reflections and Liberation For the Hurting Soul

“Esau had reason to be angry, but he responded warmly to his brother's return. If even a person like Esau, who had previously planned to murder his brother, could accept his returning brother, how much more should the older son accept his brother?”
― Peter J. Williams, The Surprising Genius of Jesus: What the Gospels Reveal about the Greatest Teacher

“Random processes could not even form one of the necessary two thousand enzymes for life.”
― Sir Fred Hoyle

“It is one thing for modern educated people to feel they must believe these old stories as factual when science proves otherwise. It is quite another for ancient people living before the dawn of scientific technology to venture clever but inevitably mistaken explanations. My guess is that many secular folks in our day take a dim view of biblical tales of a six-day creation, a universal flood, etc., blaming these stories for the oppressive use of them by religious leaders who ought to know better. But that’s not fair. Who, after all, scorns and ridicules the Greek or the Norse myths? No one, because no one catechizes us to believe these literally. They haven’t left a bad taste in our mouths. Nor should the myths of Genesis.
If we could somehow visit the past and explain to the authors of Genesis the true origins of the earth and its life-forms, of languages, and of ethnicities, I suspect they would rejoice to learn the truth of the matter.”
― Robert M. Price, Holy Fable: The Old Testament Undistorted by Faith