Is man one of God’s blunders, or is God one of man’s blunders?

As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance. They are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep - as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny.

Religion is flawed but only because man is flawed.

To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic.

I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.

One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.

Can it be that man is nothing but a frightened god?

The folly isn’t mine. It’s God’s folly. Even in the old days he never asked men to do what was reasonable.

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.

Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again. Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come.

He does see Himself as the Divine Artist. Of course, He is also a blunderer — so many of His creations are botched. A good many are disasters which He then proceeds to plow back into the food chain. That is His only means of keeping His multitudinous, mediocre, and often meaningless spawnings from choking the existence of the rest. Yet, I will admit, He is dogged. He is still looking to improve His previous creations.

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error

God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He forces one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another's fruit. He confuses and confounds time, places, and natural conditions. He mutilates his dog, his horses, and his slaves. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse, and be shaped to his master's taste like the trees in his garden.

To err is human