#abraham

altho’ Chance produces Irregularities, still the Odds will be infinitely great, that in process of Time, those Irregularities will bear no proportion to the recurreney of that Order which naturally results from ORIGINAL DESIGN ↗

— Abraham De Moivre

#chance #de #design #moivre #original

He was a secretive man, who kept his own counsel. He was an ambitious man of humble origins, with colossal designs on the future. And it would always be advantageous not to be closely known, never to be transparent. Passing a farmer on a day, he would tip his hat and grin. Everybody knew him. Nobody knew him. He would play the fool, the clown, the melancholy poet dying for love, the bumpkin. He would take the world by stealth and not by storm. He would disarm enemies by his apparent naiveté, by seeming pleasantly harmless. He would go to such lengths in making fun of his own appearance that others felt obliged to defend it. -Daniel Mark Epstein. ↗

— Daniel Mark Epstein

#design

I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all mean are created free and equal. ↗

— Seth Grahame-Smith

#equality #freedom #equality

One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses—'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing'—along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #curses #heretics #hiwi-al-balkhi #irony

The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#atheism #bible

Therefore, the church is not absolutely necessary as an object of faith, not even for us today, for then Abraham and the other prophets would not have given assent to those things which were revealed to them from God without any intervening help of the church. ↗

— William Ames

#absolutely #any #assent #church #even

Libertarians are essentially what the Republicans were 30 years ago. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. They'd all fit more under the Libertarian label than the modern day Republican label. ↗

— Drew Carey

#abraham lincoln #ago #day #essentially #fit

Change your mind and change your whole life experience. ↗

— C.G. Rousing

#abraham-hicks #fantasy #gate #jerry-and-esther-hicks #law-of-attraction

Great was the name of Abraham, but all his Sons were not accepted; only Isaac was in the Covenant. ↗

— John Pearson

#accepted #covenant #great #his #isaac

For when God is said by these things to try men and prove them, to see what is in their hearts and whether they will keep His commandments or no, we are not to understand, that it is for His own information, or that He may obtain evidence Himself of their sincerity (for he needs no trials for His information); but chiefly for their conviction, and to exhibit evidence to their consciences... So when God tempted or tried Abraham with that difficult command of offering up his son, it was not for His satisfaction, whether he feared God or no, but for Abraham's own greater satisfaction and comfort, and the more clear manifestation of the favour of God to him. ↗

— Jonathan Edwards

#adversity #faith #trials #faith