Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

I understood the life around me better, not from love, which everybody acknowledges to be a great teacher, but from estrangement, to which nobody has attributed the power of reinforcing insight

As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. It's a big universe, of course, so He, She, or It, could be profitably employed in many places. But what has clearly been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God. And then after a while, we explain it, and so that's no longer God's realm.

People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law and gives men license to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of God so that they regard Him with fear and hate rather than with love. The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it is embodied in systems of religion and expressed in modes of worship.

I will confess to you that, you know, one of the statements that's been attributed to me that I'm sort of proud of is somebody said, you know, "What do we do about Osama bin Laden?" And they asked me, "Can we forgive him?" And I said, "Forgiveness is up to God. I just hope we hurry up the meeting." And that's the way I feel about him, really. [8 February 2003 show of Meet The Press, NBC News]

After all science is essentially international and it is only through lack of the historical sense that national qualities have been attributed to it.

Happiness is an imaginary condition formerly attributed by the living to the dead now usually attributed by adults to children and by children to adults.

A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear but not that thing.

It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that some portion of the neglect of science in England may be attributed to the system of education we pursue.

When you look at all the miracles attributed to Jesus they're all about change.

It's far too much to say that effective hoping is the only - or even the biggest - part of what it takes to succeed. If 14% of business productivity can be attributed to hope that means 86% is dependent on raw talent fickle business cycles the quality of the product you're selling and often pure dumb luck.