Quotes about Moses

151 Sourced Quotes

In the coming world they will not ask me—Why were you not Moses? They will ask me—Why were you not Zusya?

Zusha of Hanipol

I'm sitting at the dinner table, wearing my future mother-in-law's underwear. It's like some twisted dream that you wake up and thinkL Crikey Moses! Thank God that didn't really happen!

Sophie Kinsella

I don't remember Moses writing, 'Thou shalt not kill unless you think you have a good reason'.

I've painted for a very long time, but I don't get tired or bored by it; I love to do it. If I don't paint one day, I don't feel well physically or mentally. My eyes bother me when I don't paint. But when I paint a full day, I feel satisfied and everything seems to be OK. I would never stop, never retire. I don't see how people can retire; I don't understand that. My brother Moses died while he was painting. He was actually working on a painting, and the last words he said were to the model: "Phoebe, don't frown." Then he died. He worked to the very last minute.

Within the scientific skeleton of truth, religious meaning attempts to flourish, often by denying the scientific framework itself — rather like sawing off the branch where you cheerily perch. The disgust is mutual because modern science gleefully denies virtually all the basic tenets of religion in general. According to the typical view of modern science, religion is not much more than a holdover from the childhood of humanity, with about as much reality as, say, Santa Claus. Whether the religious claims are more literal (Moses parting the Red Sea) or more mystical (religion invovlves direct spiritual experience) modern science denies them all, simply because there is no credible empirical evidence for any of them.

I do believe that half a dozen commonplace attorneys could so mystify and misconstrue the Ten Commandments, and so confuse Moses' surroundings on Mount Sinai, that the great law-giver, if he returned to this planet, would doubt his own identity, abjure every one of his deliverances, yea, even commend the very sins he so clearly forbade his people.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

God gave His laws to Moses…and like it or not, God condemns the sin of homosexuality.

- Report...

When Israel was in Egypt land,
Let my people go,
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let my people go.
Go down, Moses,
Way-down in Egypt land,
Tell old Pharaoh
To let my people go.

It never occurred to him that now he was looking at his master, at the one person in all the world who held his fate right between her palms - me, in patched hand-me-downs and untrimmed hair and idiot smile - and that my hatred for him is pure and black and unforgiving. And that I don't believe in God, but if I did, if I did, it would be the God of Moses, angry and demanding and OUT FOR REVENGE...

Elizabeth E. Wein

I would not be a Moses to lead you into the Promised Land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.

Identity is not found, the way Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Identity is built.

Margaret Halsey

I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if He had taken a poll in the land of Israel?

Harry S. Truman

And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them.

Scripture makes it clear that unlike the conceptions of Abraham and of Jacob, Isaac was conceived through divine agency. Like the Mycenaean Greek heroes, Isaac could claim paternity at two levels; the human and the divine.... Normative Judaism has divested itself of this approach to the paternity of heroes, in spite of the tell-tale text in Genesis. Midrash does not hesitate to call Moses half-god and half-man.... The Church tradition that connects the sacrifice of Isaac with the sacrifice of Christ apparently rests on a sound exegesis, for the sacrifice of Isaac would have meant not only the sacrifice of Abraham's son but of God's.

Cyrus H. Gordon

Throughout the Old Testament we see God choosing what is weak and humble to represent him (the stammering Moses, the infant Samuel, Saul from an insignificant family, David confronting Goliath, etc). Paul tells us that God chooses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. Here, however, we have a striking contradiction. In Constantine God is supposedly choosing an Augustus, a triumphant military leader. This vision and this miracle are totally impossible. But they are not impossible in the context of Christianity that is already off the rails, that thinks of God as the one who directs history and is the motive power in politics.

Moses had described a path to God, but this path was neither taken up by everyone nor was it understood by everyone. Jesus illuminated and perfected this path; nevertheless, many even now remain unbelievers. Muhammad tried to make the same path easier, so that it might be accepted by all, even idolaters. These are the most famous of the said paths to God, although many others were presented by the wise and the prophets

Nicholas of Cusa

Neither Britain, a province fertile in tyrants, nor the people of Ireland, knew Moses and the prophets.

Revelation can be supplemented by reason. Christ Himself gave reasons for His belief, and put in modern form, these reasons are, to my mind, conclusive. You remember the passage in the earliest Gospel: "But as touching the dead, that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err" (Mark xii, 26 R. V.) Herein, in a form adapted to Jewish thought is "the one great argument which has made most sincere believers in God believers in Immortality also.

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?

Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.

If you knew Susie like I know Susie,
Oh, oh, oh what a girl!
There's none so classy as this fair lassie,
Oh, oh, Holy Moses, what a chassis!

Give Mister Moses assurances that I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit. Order No. 11 does not sustain this statement, I amidt, but then I do not sustain that order. It never would have been issued if it had not been telegraphed the moment penned, without one moment's reflection.

Ulysses S. Grant

Venice, as a city, was a foundling, floating upon the waters like Moses in his basket among the bulrushes.

In the days of Moses and the prophets such a man would have been counted among the wise men of the land; in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake.

Hans Christian Andersen

I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself. This meant that I had to come to understand Moses well enough to believe in my portrayal of him.

Charlton Heston

And Numenius, the Pythagorean philosopher, expressly writes: 'For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.'

Clement of Alexandria

The Postulates of Mathematics Were Not on the Stone Tablets that Moses Brought Down from Mt. Sinai.

Richard Hamming

[Moses] probably said to himself, 'Must stop or I shall be getting silly.' That is why there are only ten commandments.

Mrs Patrick Campbell